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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25255789">Up Against Your Will</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/graceling_in_a_suit/pseuds/WitnessToMyOwnHistory'>WitnessToMyOwnHistory (graceling_in_a_suit)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(None of the losers don't worry), Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, And a goat!, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Dehumanization, Falling In Love, Found Family, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Minor Character Death, No Smut, Recovery, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Teenage Losers, Zombie Richie, but also:, depictions of cannibalism, disease and contagion, is apocalypse cottagecore a thing? because it should be. and this is it, mentions of past trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:07:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>36,456</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25255789</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/graceling_in_a_suit/pseuds/WitnessToMyOwnHistory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>We’re all going to die, Eddie thought, turning his attention back to the street before him. Survive a mass extinction event only to kill ourselves playing house with the living dead. Fucking typical.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It's the end of the goddam world, and the thread Eddie Kaspbrak is hanging on by is looking mighty thin. He's got his friends by his side, of course, and his trusty throwing knives, but he's still just a kid. The last thing he needs is a pet zombie that Bleeding Heart Ben won't let him kill. For all that it might seem tame, and like it could understand what they were saying, Eddie knew the truth; there was no humanity left in the boy formerly known as Richie Tozier.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>194</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Richie/Eddie Bigbang 2019</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>We made it, folks! It's been a wild ride behind the scenes of this fic. Huge thanks are due to my wonderful artist <a href="https://www.instagram.com/katniss_pond/?hl=en">KatnissPond</a> for being such a great cheerleader and producing some goddamn <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CCpU2nNFUjP/?igshid=1dzc4occx44cu">amazing art.</a></p><p>Thanks also to the mods of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/reddiebang19">Reddie Bang 19</a>; y'all are heroes.</p><p>Enjoy! xx</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Ten minutes then we’re fucking out of here. Got it?”</p><p>Beverly’s command echoed around the wreckage of what was once a Walmart.</p><p>Ben and Stan nodded but Eddie didn’t bother. He was already making a beeline for the medical supplies.</p><p>Bandages, bandaids, sterilizing alcohol swabs, and some gummy vitamins were swallowed up by his hungry bag. The shelves were a mess. It looked like a bomb had gone off.</p><p>Maybe it had; things had gotten pretty dicey in the first few weeks post-outbreak.</p><p>It wouldn’t be the first crater Eddie had scoured for supplies and it wouldn’t be the last.</p><p>But then his eyes caught sight of a trail of blood on the floor leading away from the shelves and through a set of doors into the back.</p><p>He whistled softly, but heard no reply. Eddie swore under his breath. Fucking giant Wallmart ceilings, swallowing his covert signal.</p><p>That was fresh blood, though. And there was a goddamn lot of it.</p><p>He left his bag on the floor, hands empty. They twitched at his sides as the crept up the aisle, so he pulled two of his small, wickedly sharp throwing knives from his belt. He was careful to avoid stepping in the blood; his shoes had seen enough of that for a lifetime.</p><p>He paused when he reached the doors. They were still swaying slightly, which was not ideal. He couldn’t see through them into the storeroom behind.</p><p>A footstep caught his attention and he turned, knife at the ready.</p><p>Ben stood there, eyes wide. He nodded down at the blood. Eddie pointed over his shoulder at the door then gestured between the two of them.</p><p>Ben pulled his machete out of his bag, then carefully placed the bag on the floor.</p><p>As a unit, they moved towards the door. Eddie took the left and Ben took the right. They glanced at each other, nodded, and pushed through with their weapons drawn.</p><p>The storeroom was larger than Eddie expected; there were shelves stacked to the ceiling with untouched crates. Eddie calculated the value of it all in a daze; they could live off the supplies in here for months.</p><p>Then he noticed where the trail of blood was leading and his skin turned to ice.</p><p>On the floor, lying in a pool of blood was an older woman, at least in her forties—that was a rare sight, since most people over thirty either died or turned during the first outbreak. She was gasping for breath, but Eddie could barely hear it over the slurping, munching, <em>eating </em>noises of the thing crouching over her.</p><p>Eddie wished Bev was by his and Ben’s side so she could’ve emptied her shotgun into its head. Her hands never shook like his did when confronted with gore.</p><p>Even after all this time—years, it’d been fucking years of this—he still wasn’t used to the sight of a human body ripped open while a monster that was once a person feasted on its insides.</p><p>“Fucking walkers,” Ben muttered, looking like he was about to throw chunks himself.</p><p>The zombie’s head turned to them at that. It was a languid, unhurried turn. It had dark, curly hair that was matted to its head and wide, bloodshot eyes behind a pair of black-framed glasses. The one of the lenses was missing and the other was cracked, and they looked a second away from falling off its face. Truth be told, it might have once been a handsome boy, without all the chunks of viscera staining its front and it’s greying, muddy flesh.</p><p>Eddie’s grip fastened on his knife, readying to throw. Any second now the zombie was going to leap at them with blunt, yellow fingernails that clawed desperately at their skin, jaw gnashing until its teeth found flesh. And if that happened, odds weren’t in your favour of staying human for long—you either got dead, or got <em>hungry</em>. Eddie didn’t care to roll those dice, thank you very much.</p><p>But the zombie didn’t leap. It didn’t growl. It just looked at them with those huge unblinking eyes like it was experiencing the harrowing ordeal of sentience.</p><p>That was definitely worse, but Eddie didn’t have long to feel unsettled. A low moan came from the darkness at the back of the storeroom, and then another, and another, and five more walkers shuffled out of the shadows. Their movements were jerky, but swift.</p><p>“Shit. Fuck,” Eddie cursed, backing up.</p><p>Ben’s eyes scanned the pack, taking them in. Eddie saw the moment he decided they were in too good a shape for just the two of them to take down. Maybe if the walkers were missing some limbs here and there, or were starting to rot with unchecked infections. But these were fresh bastards, and they looked starving.</p><p>“Bev!” Ben yelled, not taking his eyes off their progress—now about halfway across the storeroom.</p><p>The first one was still looking at them. Eddie watched as it wiped its mouth clean of the now-dead woman’s blood: a jarringly human action.</p><p>“Stan!” Eddie tried.</p><p>By now, he and Ben were pressed against the swinging doors. They were waiting for the last second to push through and escape; by some unspoken agreement, they’d decided to try to take a few of the fuckers out before they ran for it.</p><p>Eddie loosed a knife at what looked like the freshest of the pack. The hilt buried all the way through the eye socket and the zombie dropped to the floor like a wet sack of potatoes.</p><p>The others didn’t stop coming, though. All Eddie had managed to do was lose one of his precious few knives. Fuck.</p><p>Eddie heard shouting from the other side of the door then the tell-tale click-click-bang of Bev’s pump action shotgun going off and winced. Sounded like he and Ben weren’t the only ones with problems.</p><p>Eddie shared a look with him.</p><p>They adjusted their feet to throw themselves forward into the pack—they sure as hell weren’t going out without a fight and they’d made it through worse than this before, so there was always a chance—but then the first one stood shakily and turned its back to them.</p><p>A noise came out of its mouth that Eddie couldn’t describe. It was a whining groan, low and high all at once; double pitched and a nightmare on the ears.</p><p>The pack stopped their ceaseless shuffling. Their eyes all snapped to it.</p><p>The room was still.</p><p>Eddie thanked his lucky stars that he’d always been better at listening to his feet than his too-curious head. He shoved the door open with his back and pivoted. Ben was only a few moments behind him as they fled into the front of the Walmart.</p><p>They ran right past Beverly. Eddie leapt over the twitching corpses of two downed zombies, one with it’s head splattered across the floor and the other with huge slashes across its chest and face. Stan was leaning against one of the shelves and wiping his katana down with a pink Hello Kitty blanket—god knew where he’d found that.</p><p>“C’mon!” Eddie called, barely pausing to take a breath and pull his backpack over his shoulders from where it was resting, safe at Stan’s feet. “We need to get out of here right the fuck now.”</p><p>Bev and Stan didn’t have to be told twice.</p><p>Out on the street everything was quiet. Eddie screeched to a halt and focused on filling his lungs while Ben, Bev and Stan joined him. He had to stop himself from reaching for an inhaler that he neither had nor needed. Old habits died hard.</p><p>“What happened in there?” Stan demanded, running a shaking hand through his golden curls. His katana was still in his hand. Eddie had stopped making fun of him for it months ago, but—</p><p>“I don’t know, Highlander, what do <em>you </em>think happened?” He huffed, crossing then uncrossing his arms. “There were six freshes in the back. I lost a knife on one.”</p><p>“But that’s not all,” Ben added, color starting to return to his face. “Tell them, Eddie—”</p><p>Eddie hushed him urgently. Ben deflated, then saw that something had caught Eddie’s eyes from across the street.</p><p>Eddie had assumed, like everyone else, that they were safe on the sunlit street. Walkers and the sun didn’t mix very well; it was a jelly and mustard kind of thing. So, there hadn’t been much chance of being followed.</p><p>And yet, standing between the propped-open automatic doors of the Walmart, was the zombie.</p><p>The first one.</p><p>The strange one.</p><p>Bev had her shotgun propped against her shoulder in a second, sights trained on its head.</p><p>It stared at her, head tilted to the side. It almost looked like it was squinting.</p><p>Ben stepped in front of Beverly.</p><p>She dropped the gun as if burned.</p><p>“Jesus, Benny, don’t do that—” she started.</p><p>The zombie moved forward. It’s legs seemed too long for the rest of it, like stilts for an uncoordinated rat. It was now standing in direct sunlight. All the better to see the blood stains that covered its grey t-shirt and black cargo shorts, the small chunks of unidentified organs in its hair, the awful grey-yellow color of its skin.</p><p>Eddie gagged, gesturing urgently at Beverly until she raised her gun again, this time over Ben’s shoulder.</p><p>He just stepped to the left, putting himself between them once again. “Don’t shoot it,” he said firmly.</p><p>Beverly and Eddie looked at him like he was insane, but it was Stan who actually demanded, “Are you insane?”</p><p>“It doesn’t act right,” Ben argued. “There’s something different about it. Eddie can tell you—it stood between us and those freshes.”</p><p>“Yeah, after it was done eating some poor lady’s fucking large intestine, Ben!”</p><p>“Wait! Guys, guys, look—it’s got something,” Stan interrupted.</p><p>Eddie followed the line of Stan’s vision. Sure enough, there was something in its hand. Eddie narrowed his eyes and tried to puzzle out the shape of the object, but all he could see was the way it was glinting in the sunlight.</p><p>Then the zombie took another step forward and held out its hand.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Eddie froze. “That’s my fucking knife,” he said, then louder, “That asshole’s got my fucking knife.”</p><p>The zombie did something with its mouth that, on a different face, might have been a friendly smile.</p><p>“Swear jar,” Ben commented distractedly.</p><p>Eddie rolled his eyes at him and nudged Beverly. “Blow its brains out, will you?”</p><p>But she lowered the shotgun instead. “Maybe Ben’s got a point, though,” she said, looking between the now-idle zombie—still holding Eddie’s knife out like the world’s most obvious trap—and Ben. “I’ve never seen one do that.”</p><p>“And with any luck, you’ll never have to again. Shoot it.”</p><p>She backed away, shaking her head. “Tell me again,” she said to Ben.</p><p>“It stood between us and the others. It made this really weird noise—kind of like a brachiosaurus—”</p><p>“How do you know what a Brachiosaurus sounds like?” Stan cut in.</p><p>“How do you not?” Ben looked honestly incredulous, then continued, “The freshes stopped after that. I think it was protecting us.”</p><p>“Or it was telling them that it wanted to eat us first. Jesus, Bev, are you really listening to this shit?” Eddie raged.</p><p>Beverly looked torn.</p><p>There was a shuffling noise behind them and Eddie turned back to see the zombie retreat back into the shadows cast by the Walmart. It was still staring at them, though. And it hadn’t dropped his knife.</p><p>“Do you guys remember that survivor’s commune we passed through a few months back?” Stan said. His voice sounded distant, unplugged, but then he cleared his throat and his next words were firmer. “It had a stupid name.”</p><p>“Dagobah. It’s from Star Wars,” Eddie supplied.</p><p>Beverly’s eyebrows lifted in realization. “Shit, Stan, yeah. They had three rotters in cages at the gates—they said they scared off other zombies.”</p><p>“Yeah, because they were batshit crazy,” Eddie huffed.</p><p>“But what if they were onto something!” Beverly gestured to the placid presence staring at them from across the street. “We could chain it up at night or something, let it keep watch instead of one of us.”</p><p>That argument gave Eddie pause, which just went to show how much he hated getting up in the middle of the night for his turn on watch—even though it was always him who insisted on it.</p><p>“We’d have to feed it, though. Wouldn’t we?” Stan fussed with the hem of his shirt. “It’s probably only behaving like this because it’s full up on people meat. We can barely feed ourselves as it is. Besides, Bill and Mike will <em>flip out </em>if we take it back to Safehouse.”</p><p>“It could find its own food. Or we could feed it scraps,” argued Beverly. “And they’ll be fine with it, because it’s a great idea.”</p><p>No one could offer a rebuttal.</p><p>“Jesus, are you serious? You’re all just going along with this?” Eddie demanded.</p><p>Ben looked sheepish. Stan looked affronted. Beverly looked pissed the fuck off (well, more so than usual).</p><p>“Listen to me, you little shit,” she hissed. “It’s a good plan and you know it.”</p><p>“Sorry, Eddie,” Ben soothed. “But it couldn’t hurt to try, don’t you think?”</p><p>“<em>Couldn’t hurt—</em>” Eddie threw his hands in the air. “Fuck it. Fine. But don’t come crying to me about it when it eats us all in our sleep like the disease-ridden monster it is.”</p><p>Eddie stomped away down the road. He hoped his dramatic exit was taking him towards the house they’d staked out to bunk in that night, but honestly, even if it didn’t, he couldn’t care less.</p><p>From behind him he heard three sets of footsteps and the tell-tale shuffling of a fresh zombie.</p><p>After a few minutes he dared to glance behind him. Bev, Ben and Stan were all talking amongst themselves. Their shiny, new, blood-stained pet was ambling along about fifty feet behind them. And it was still holding Eddie’s goddam knife.</p><p><em>We’re all going to die, </em>Eddie thought, turning his attention back to the street before him. <em>Survive a mass extinction event only to kill ourselves playing house with the living dead. Fucking typical.</em></p><p>He could always put his foot down, of course. If it came down to Eddie or that thing, he knew which one his friends would choose.</p><p>But as much as he protested and as much as he definitely knew better, there was still a part of him—the curious little boy he’d been before all of this, poking toads with sticks and sending his overbearing mother into an early grave—that was sort of... anxious to see what would happen.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Stan was in the kitchen boiling water over a small fire in the sink when Eddie stumbled downstairs the next morning.</p><p>Bev and Ben were still asleep, cuddled close like they tended to do through the night (only to ignore it in the morning; it was a delicate dance that Eddie didn't care for). Eddie had tried not to wake them as he rolled up his sleeping bag and stuffed it back into his pack, and then he'd tried to be quiet on his way down the creaky stairs.</p><p>Stan would have heard him coming anyway, but he wasn’t who Eddie was worried about.</p><p>“Hey,” Stan said, looking up from the bubbling saucepan. Eddie nodded to him and moved to stand by his side. He was carefully positioned to have a full view of the front of the house—the boarded-up door; the shattered glass of the huge, street facing, hardly-a-window-anymore; the minefield of nails and glass and wooden spikes in front of it that they’d put there last night; and the undead guard dog on the front lawn.</p><p>Stan glanced at Eddie's frowning face, then supplied, “He hasn’t moved much this morning. I’ve been watching him for a while. I don’t think he even tried to come inside last night.”</p><p>Eddie studied the trap before the window then nodded. Nothing looked out of place. “Thanks,” he said. He could always trust Stan to understand his paranoia. Between Bev’s invincibility complex and Ben’s ceaseless optimism, there had been many a night where Eddie and Stan had been the only two to insist on taking watch. Bill and Mike might have got it a little, but they’d parked themselves down a few years ago and were more concerned with growing roots than staying alive.</p><p>But not Stanley.</p><p>He looked at Eddie and smiled tightly.</p><p>They didn’t talk much after that, working quietly in the small kitchen to heat up some canned beans for everyone. Eventually Bev and Ben stumbled down the stairs. The complaining floorboards caught the attention of the creature outside.</p><p>Eddie had his hand over the knives strapped to his waist the second he saw it moving in his peripheral vision, but all it did was shuffle closer to the house and look in through the open window. Its lopsided glasses were still splattered with blood, as was its shirt. Its hair was slightly damp and the ends were curling into unpredictable knots. Eddie vaguely remembered waking up to the sound of rain in the middle of the night. For a moment—just a moment—he almost felt bad for the thing.</p><p>“I think he’s hungry,” joked Ben.</p><p>“Well, tough shit,” snapped Eddie. He dropped his hand from his waist, then grabbed a tin of beans and started shovelling them into his mouth.</p><p>“C’mon, Eddie.” Bev rolled her eyes. “We said we’d feed it.”</p><p>“I saw some rats run down into the basement,” Stan offered drily. “Bon appetit.”</p><p>Bev locked eyes with him as she drew a kitchen knife from the drawer. "Guess I'm going rat catching, then."</p><p>Stan looked horrified. Ben laughed into his hand.</p><p>Eddie dropped his finished can on the counter and wiped his mouth. “Put the knife down, Norman Bates. Jesus Christ. You’re not gonna stab a rat, okay? They’ve got rabies. You’ll get rabies.”</p><p>Beverly’s poker face broke and she grinned, letting go of the knife and slamming the drawer shut. “I was kidding, asshole.” Eddie rolled his eyes and Bev continued, “Let’s just lure it inside and push it downstairs. It can hunt for itself. It’s a walker, they’ve got, like. Killer instincts or something. Right?”</p><p>The four of them turned to look at the figure in the window. It looked more like a bloody drowned racoon than a killer, but Eddie knew better than to underestimate it.</p><p>He threw his hands up and backed away. “If you wanna do that, knock yourself out. I’m gonna go wait outside. Down the street. Very far down the street. Try not to die.”</p><p>Bev muttered something under her breath, but Eddie ignored her. He swung his bag over his shoulder then glanced at Stan. “You coming?”</p><p>Stan looked torn. He looked at Ben and Bev, then at the zombie. “You go on ahead, Eddie,” he answered. “I think I’ll help here.”</p><p>Eddie pursed his lips. “Fine,” he said, trying to sound calm. He marched out the back door, leant against a tree, and waited for everything to go to shit.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie Kaspbrak was used to being wrong. He didn’t care for it, but it happened often anyway.</p><p>He was wrong when he was eleven years old and he thought his biggest problems in life were black mould in the stairwell at school and math homework. He was wrong at twelve when people started getting sick and his mom stopped eating and started looking at him different and he thought, <em>this is it, life can’t get any fucking worse than this.</em></p><p>And now here he was at seventeen. Three days march with a zombie tied to a rope behind them, and neither he nor his friends has lost so much as a digit.</p><p>“I don’t get why it doesn’t just run away,” Eddie ranted. Bev and Stan had started to tune him out already, but Ben was politely listening. “That rope is a joke. Look! It’s not even tight.”</p><p>Ben followed Eddie’s gaze. The walker was staring at its feet (it still had one shoe on—a black sneaker) and its mop of hair was obscuring its face. Ben and Eddie watched as the rope around its wrist started to fall and it used its other hand to clumsily push it the rest of the way off.</p><p>“Jesus, Stan. Who taught you how to tie a knot?” Eddie hissed.</p><p>“Boy scouts,” Stan said, sounding mildly panicked.</p><p>"Would you guys relax?" Bev tugged at the rope, spooling it around her arm into a bundle. The zombie seemed to notice they'd stopped walking and was blinking at them vacantly. "It's obviously not a threat."</p><p>"Sure, it might look pathetic now," Eddie argued, gesturing wildly. "But you'll be kicking yourself when it decides we're better off as chowder. Or, you won't be, because you won't have any feet, because it's going to eat your damn feet. Can you even kick without feet?"</p><p>"Breathe much, Kaspbrak?" Stan said. It was a gently mocking reminder—the Stanley Uris Special.</p><p>Eddie took a breath and fixed his hair. It was soft beneath his touch, thankfully. He could have blood and dirt from head to toe and be mostly okay, but if his hair was gross then all bets were off. His sanity was a game of checkers on a good day, and Russian roulette on a bad one, and shit in his hair was a guaranteed bullet.</p><p>Today was a good day, though. They’d made decent progress on their trip back to Safehouse; the clouds overhead hadn’t turned to rain; the zombie hadn't used any of its many opportunities to rush them while they were distracted and send them all to kingdom come. Even now it was just standing there, swaying on its feet.</p><p>"Fuck it," Eddie said, throwing his hands up and turning back to their path. "Fine."</p><p>Bev shot him a grin and slung the bundle of rope over Ben's head. It rested on his shoulders like a bulky, itchy necklace.</p><p>He didn't complain. He simply said <em>thanks.</em></p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There was something wrong with him.</p><p>Eddie's been thinking it on and off for an hour. They’d set up camp for the night—the sun was a while from setting, but there was only so long they could walk before they wore through the soles of their shoes, and then have to start again the next day—and the one-storey shithole they’d chosen to sleep in had little to keep Eddie entertained. Stan and Bev had disappeared off down the road to find something for the zombie to eat, which left Ben on dinner duty and Eddie to stand in front of the living room window and look through lace curtains (yellowing and frayed, with splatters of old blood stains; he was trying not to think about it), fiddle with his rubik’s cube, and stare at the figure in the back garden.</p><p>He was crouched over, huddled among the overgrown rose bushes. The thorns scraped at his already roughed-up skin. He didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy shivering. One of his hands was in his mouth, scraping at his teeth.</p><p>There was something fucking wrong with him.</p><p>Eddie looked over his shoulder, but he couldn’t see Ben in the kitchen from where he was standing. He just saw a set of ugly couches with matching paisley print that reminded him uncomfortably of the ones his mother used to yell at him for spilling juice on.</p><p>Eddie bit his lip and turned back to the window. His fingers twitched mindlessly, turning the sides of the cube this way and that. He wasn’t even trying to solve it.</p><p>“Shit.”</p><p>Eddie let himself out into the back garden.</p><p>The zombie looked up straight away. His eyes were wide and unfocused behind his ruined glasses. There was something strange about his lips.</p><p>Eddie thought about pulling out one of his daggers, but his hands were busy not-solving-but-keeping-him-sane, so he decided against it.</p><p>“What’s wrong with you?” Eddie demanded, like the thing was going to answer him. “Hm? You gonna die or something?”</p><p>The rubik’s cube went snick, snick, snick in his hands, and the zombie stared at him.</p><p>Blood dripped down from the corner of his mouth.</p><p>“Jesus christ,” Eddie hissed, backing up.</p><p>The zombie shivered as it stood. He looked about ready to keel over. The fresh scrapes on his arms weren’t bleeding, but his mouth still was.</p><p>Eddie finally shoved the rubik’s cube in his pocket. He pulled out his longest knife and held it in front of him as he walked forwards.</p><p>“Dude, if you try anything I’ll fucking skewer you, yeah?”</p><p>The zombie swayed on his feet.</p><p>“Good. Okay,” Eddie breathed in and out, mind racing. “You didn’t eat anything. That’s your blood,” he guessed. A half-eaten animal carcass didn’t jump out to prove him wrong, so Eddie continued, “Are we not feeding you properly? Or is it all the walking?”</p><p>He came to a stop five feet in front of the zombie and tilted his head to the side as he considered it. “No, that doesn’t sound right. What is it, then. Scurvy?”</p><p>He could’ve sworn he heard the zombie react to that—an exhalation of air that could have passed for a laugh if the thing could understand a world he was saying.</p><p>“See, if you weren’t so... spawn of the dead, I might’ve said it was gingivitis. You brushing your teeth every day, asshole? Two minutes either side?”</p><p>He pointed at the zombie with his knife accusingly.</p><p>A slow blink and an even slower dribble of blood down his chin was the only response.</p><p>“Didn’t think so. You gotta stay on top of that shit.” Eddie backed up and shoved his knife back into its sheath. “Don’t go anywhere.”</p><p>Eddie turned away. The zombie grunted behind him. Eddie shot him a glance, but he hadn’t moved. He was still just standing there, staring.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Bev and Stan had apparently arrived while Eddie was distracted in the garden. He could hear them laughing with Ben in the kitchen and the sounds of cutlery against plates.</p><p>Eddie put all thoughts of terrible dental hygiene out of his mind as he joined them for dinner. The thoughts resurfaced when Bev disappeared out back to give the walker it's dinner (a dead fox; it looked half-starved itself), but Eddie bombarded Ben with inane questions until they were background noise.</p><p>Once it was over and the plates were all wiped down and packed back into their bags, Eddie rapped his knuckles on the counter.</p><p>Stan looked up from his conversation with Ben, and Bev raised her eyebrows from her perch on the kitchen cabinet.</p><p>“Did you guys see anywhere to take a bath around here?” Eddie asked.</p><p>Beverly snorted, but Stan considered the question.</p><p>“There was a house with a pool about ten minutes south,” he said.</p><p>“And there was a Catholic church ten minutes the other way,” Bev said, teasing smile growing. “If you want to take a dip in the holy water and catch on fire.”</p><p>“Hey, fuck you,” Eddie snapped.</p><p>It was too loud and too harsh for the room. The others went still, Ben staring at Bev and Stan at his feet.</p><p>She looked taken aback, then she set her jaw.</p><p>Eddie couldn’t really say he was sorry, so he didn’t.</p><p>“I’m taking him–” Eddie nodded at the back garden, “–so I’ll need someone to come with us.”</p><p>He fled from the room before anyone could respond.</p><p>He was standing in the front garden, adjusting the straps of his backpack and whistling for the walker like it was a dog—hey, he could hear its footsteps getting closer, so it was obviously working—when Stan came out to meet him.</p><p>Figures it would be him; Ben wouldn’t want to leave Bev, and she always avoided Eddie when he was feeling volatile. Which was a lot of the time, these days.</p><p>“I’d catch fire, too, y’know,” Stan joked, hands in his pockets.</p><p>Eddie bumped their wrists together. Their watches made a soft <em>clack </em>as they collided. Eddie never asked Stanley why he didn’t  take his off even though the battery in it had died two years ago. If he had, the answer might have been, <em>because my father gave it to me, and I want to remember him; </em>and Eddie would have had to say, <em>it’s the same for me, but I don’t remember him at all, </em>and what would be the point in any of that.</p><p>“Would you?” Eddie asked, playing dumb.</p><p>The zombie rounded the corner of the house. The blood was starting to dry on his chin, and he hadn’t wiped it off.</p><p>“A jewish boy in a Catholic church?” Stan said. “Jesus would cry.”</p><p>“Jesus was a jewish boy,” replied Eddie.</p><p>“You <em>do </em>listen to me,” Stan swooned.</p><p>Well, he did a Stanley version of swooning, which was a reservedly fond little head tilt and smile.</p><p>Eddie felt his cheeks stretch into a smile of his own. He turned and started walking south. Stan skipped to keep up with him. He checked over his shoulder to see if the walker was following.</p><p>He was, and at a respectable distance at that.</p><p>“He’s suspiciously well trained,” Stan commented, and for a moment Eddie wasn’t sure if he was being made fun of, but then he continued, “Do you think we can teach him tricks?”</p><p>Eddie snorted. “I’ve got a great trick he can learn, it’s called <em>brushing your teeth!” </em></p><p>He directed the last part over his shoulder pointedly.</p><p>Stanley laughed. “With what? Human toes?”</p><p>Eddie shivered, the image flashing through his mind of him crouched over that poor woman, his face buried in her intestines as he feasted like a wild dog. Suddenly it all didn’t seem so funny.</p><p>“Yeah,” he said, struggling to swallow his bile.</p><p>He glanced over his shoulder again.</p><p>The zombie tripped over his untied shoelace and made a small noise of frustration. It was hard to reconcile the sight of him with the memory, and with the dozens of others Eddie had just like it.</p><p>Eddie looked away.</p><p> </p><p>The pool was a tragic sight to behold.</p><p>There was only a foot of water at the bottom of it, buried by another half-foot of leaves and trash that had blown in.</p><p>“Fancy a dip?” Stan asked.</p><p>Eddie made a face at him.</p><p>The zombie had settled into a sullen crouch on the other side of the pool. He’d made a clumsy attempt to wipe the blood off his chin, but it had just smeared ghoulishly.</p><p>At least his gums weren’t still bleeding.</p><p>Eddie surveyed his surroundings and pursed his lips. “Alright,” he said, parking his hands on his hips. “Stan, you’re gonna take that pole over there and start scooping out the junk.”</p><p>Stan looked unimpressed.</p><p>“Please.”</p><p>He nodded.</p><p>“Thank you. I’ll be over by the water tank,” Eddie pointed over his shoulder. “Keep an eye on the walker?”</p><p>Stan scoffed, turning away. “I’ve been doing that for three days straight. It’s getting boring.”</p><p>“Good,” Eddie called, hopping onto the stand of the tank. “Better boring than eating your face!”</p><p>Stan didn’t respond, busy struggling with the net.</p><p>Eddie snorted, then sized up the tank in front of him. If he pulled himself up just high enough, he could see that the top of the tank was sealed except for a drainpipe feeding it water from the gutters of the house beside them. That was a promising sign. If they weren’t still a day and a half’s walk from home base, then this could have been a goldmine; Safehouse might still have working pipes, but that didn’t mean they always had water in them.</p><p>Eddie leant back against the hard plastic of it as he puzzled out how to get the water to the pool. There was a handy little spout poking out the bottom, but the pool was ten feet away so perhaps it wasn’t that handy after all. He was considering just knocking the fucker over and being done with it when Stan appeared at his elbow with a hose and a smile.</p><p>The triumph in his expression didn’t really match it’s appearance: peeling, dusty, a few stray bite marks for some reason.</p><p>“You shouldn’t have,” Eddie deadpanned, then grinned.</p><p>Hose, nozzle, tighten, whoosh. The blessedly clear water made a soft splashing sound as it crashed down into the puddle below, now (mostly) devoid of leaves and trash.</p><p>The puddle was still an unpleasant brown color, but it would have to do.</p><p>“Hey!” Eddie called, waving his arms at the figure on the other side of the pool, scuffing his only shoe on the pavement.</p><p>The zombie looked up at him dutifully.</p><p>Eddie pointed at the pool. “Shower time, stinky.”</p><p>He didn’t move, so Eddie picked up a rock and threw it at the base of the unimpressive waterfall he and Stan had created. “Fetch.”</p><p>For some reason, that got him moving.</p><p>Stan leant his elbow against Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie was grateful their heights had balanced out since they'd first found each other so he didn’t have to feel small about it.</p><p>“Remind me: why are we doing this?” he asked.</p><p>“Because he’s a walking biohazard, Uris. Have you seen him? It’s bad enough Bleeding Heart Ben won’t let us put him down, let alone dragging around an open fucking wound. Just because we’re already immune to the virus doesn’t mean that—” he gestured at the zombie as he dropped gracelessly into the pool and splashed his way over to the running water, “—can’t happen to us, if we catch the strain he has from his bodily fluids. So he’s having a bath and washing all that infectious fucking blood off him. It’s called risk management; look it up.”</p><p>“In what?” Stan rolled his eyes.</p><p>Eddie frowned.</p><p>“I don’t disagree with you, Eddie,” Stan said, cutting him off before he could get started again. “But you know you don’t have to make everything sound like a fight, right?”</p><p>The used-to-be-a-boy in the pool tilted his head into the water. It smoothed his wild hair and sloped down his face like a gentle caress. His glasses were missing from his face; they’d managed to sink to the bottom of the pool in the one second Eddie wasn’t paying attention. Figured.</p><p>But as the blood sloshed off him and the layer of caked-on dirt went with it, he didn’t look used-to-be at all. His skin lost its grey tone, revealing a pale, pink-ish cream.</p><p>Stan nudged him with his elbow. “Did you bring him a spare change of clothes?”</p><p>Eddie looked at him with wide eyes. “What?”</p><p>“What’s the point of washing him if he just keeps those clothes? They’re definitely contaminated.”</p><p>Eddie had thought of that, of course, but also, “I don’t want to give up my clothes. I’ve got, like, three sets.”</p><p>“And now you’ll have two.”</p><p>Eddie glared.</p><p>Stan shrugged and looked away. Eddie got the message; <em>it’s not me who cares</em>.</p><p>“Fine,” he muttered, slinging the bag off his back. “Get the pole. It’s not gonna be easy to get him to take his clothes off.”</p><p>“I don’t know about that,” Stan said, laughter in his voice.</p><p>Eddie looked up from rifling through his spare shirts to see the maybe-still-a-boy start stripping.</p><p>“Jesus!” Eddie cried while the zombie struggled with his jean shorts.</p><p>This time when he heard it—that snort, that quiet exhalation—he was ready to admit that the fucker was laughing at him. His head didn’t rise, but his shoulders shook slightly. His shorts splashed down into the murky water, and Eddie covered his eyes.</p><p>“He’s doing this on purpose, Stanley.”</p><p>Stan patted his back slowly. Eddie could feel his quiet judgement.</p><p>There was another splash of material hitting the surface of the pool. Eddie turned around and started pulling things out of his bag. “Throw this at him,” he said, tossing a bar of soap towards Stan. “We’ll just have to find out if he knows how to use it.” Odds were, he’d try and eat the thing. Seemed like a win-win either way.</p><p>Stan did as he asked, but Eddie didn’t turn to find out. His cheeks were already burning with anger.</p><p>“Are you sure it’s not too late to just drown him?” he asked petulantly.</p><p>Stan snorted. “We’ll tell the others he didn’t float.” Then he whistled down an octave, like a bomb falling.</p><p>Eddie sighed as he stared down at the clothes he’d laid out—a pair of boxers that he thankfully didn’t care about, his second favorite shirt (it had David Bowie on the front, because the world had ended and his mother was dead so there was no one to tell him he couldn’t like Ziggy Stardust) and his favorite pair of shorts. They came up to just above his knees, which meant they’d be even shorter on the walker. That wasn’t necessarily a problem; Eddie liked short-shorts, they were easier to run in, but.</p><p>He didn’t know what the ‘but’ was, just that it was loud.</p><p>“How’s the soap going?” he asked, looking up at Stan. The setting sun set his hair ablaze; he could have passed for Bev, if his chest was bigger and his attitude even more so.</p><p>“He tried to take a bite out of it before, but I think he’s got the hang of it,” Stan replied.</p><p>He wasn’t even looking away. He didn’t even look bothered.</p><p>“Stare, much?” Eddie asked, standing.</p><p>Stan rolled his eyes. “Prude, much?”</p><p>Eddie shuffled his feet, not answering. Stan looked a little guilty, then changed the subject.</p><p>“You got a towel in there?” He nodded at Eddie’s bag.</p><p>Eddie winced. “Yeah,” he said, shoulders slumping. “It was a good one, too.”</p><p>“There’s more at Safehouse,” said Stan.</p><p>Eddie pulled the towel in question out and held it up to the light. “This one’s got little ducks on it.”</p><p>Stan nodded in duck-appreciation solidarity.</p><p>“So,” he said, after the silence had stretched on for a little too long, the only sound to break it being the soft splashes coming from a pool that one of them refused to look at. “How do we get him out of there?”</p><p>Eddie pointed at him, waggling his finger in front of his face until Stan went cross-eyed. “Not ‘we’; you. I got him in there. It’s your turn to think of stuff.”</p><p>Stan looked scared.</p><p>Five minutes later, Eddie looked up from his rubik’s cube. Stan was standing next to him, having presumably achieved victory. Eddie was surprised; last time he looked up, he’d seen Stan trying and failing to coax a very pissed off, very naked wet rat up the ladder of the pool with some beef jerky he’d found in the pocket of his cargo shorts.</p><p>But victory had indeed been achieved. The wet rat was no longer wet (or ratlike, for that matter); he was standing a good few feet away, dressed in Eddie’s clothes. They clung to his body slightly, but he looked so <em>clean </em>that Eddie really didn’t care about anything else.</p><p>And he was looking at Eddie with a strange expression. His eyes were still glassy, and his skin was clammy and scratched-up, but without the blood and dirt it was harder than ever for Eddie to think of him as a threat.</p><p>For a moment, all he wanted was for the zombie to run at him and dig his nails into Eddie’s flesh and clamp his jaw down on his neck: for him to act with sudden violence and malicious intent, for him to act like a <em>normal fucking walker.</em></p><p>Then something hit Eddie in the chest, and he caught it instinctively. It was the zombie that had thrown it, and Eddie scrambled to pull the object away from his chest to see—</p><p>A rock. A plain grey rock about the size of a golf ball.</p><p>Eddie frowned. It took a second for him to recognise it as the same rock he’d thrown into the pool earlier, the one he’d told the zombie to <em>fetch.</em></p><p>His frown turned into a scowl. “He’s funny,” he accused, passing the rock to Stan.</p><p>Stan looked between Eddie and the walker. “I don’t know, maybe he is just a dog.”</p><p>“Dog with no shoes,” Eddie added, staring at his bare feet. That single sneaker he’d had, which was clinging to life by a thread, was lost somewhere in the pool.</p><p>“All dogs have no shoes.”</p><p>Stan and Eddie shared a look, then a nod. They started walking north, back to camp.</p><p>Shoeless Wonder followed at a respectable distance without having to be told.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It was the next night, and spirits were starting to lift. They were camping in the stretch of woods that separated Safehouse from the nearest town; they’d been quiet all day passing through it, since the Bowers gang had claimed it a few months back and cleared out all but a few of the walkers. With their new pet bringing up the rear, none of the remainder made any trouble. Eddie had been more nervous about running into Henry or one of his goons—they all had—but the day had passed uneventfully.</p><p>Bev had got a fire started, and the lot of them were loosely gathered around it, waiting to be tired enough to sleep.</p><p>Ben was sitting across from the walker, who was resting against the tree his right hand was tied to—Eddie had insisted they take the precaution, since there wouldn’t be a door between them and him all night—and Ben was throwing out names, mostly to himself.</p><p>Bev wasn’t listening; she was peeling an apple with one of Eddie’s knives and staring off into the distance.</p><p>Stan was lying on his bedroll and ‘bird-watching’ (Eddie was skeptical that he could see anything in the darkness), occasionally piping up with ridiculous suggestions of his own like <em>Digbert </em>and <em>Straciatello.</em></p><p>Eddie was playing solitaire—Stan had stolen his rubik's cube back—and tuning them all out. He wanted to tell them to stop, that they shouldn’t give the damn thing a <em>name,</em> but then the zombie made a strange noise and he started to pay attention.</p><p>Ben had just suggested <em>Reggie. </em>The walker leaned forwards, his right hand trailing behind and straining against the rope. The noise he was making was clearly meant to sound encouraging, but it made Eddie’s skin crawl.</p><p>It sounded too human, was the thing. Like a regular boy who was excited about something. Maybe he was in line at the ice cream shop, or his mom had just let him buy new shoes and he was showing them off to his friends.</p><p>Not at all like the rabid creature he was; the one who Eddie had, just this afternoon, watched leap into a bush and sink his teeth into an unsuspecting rabbit. (<em>Better it than us, </em>Bev had said at the time, but it hadn’t made anyone feel better).</p><p>“Reggie? Is that it?” Ben asked, leaning forwards on his arms.</p><p>Stan sat up and Bev paused her apple-peeling.</p><p>The walker shrunk back a little from the sudden scrutiny, the noise dying in his throat.</p><p>“Reggie’s a grandpa name,” Eddie scoffed. “I’m not calling him that.”</p><p>Not-Reggie blinked owlishly at him and moved his jaw like a cow chewing a curd.</p><p>He pursed his lips and bared his teeth. Then, he made an unexpected sound; a long “Rrrrr” that had Eddie leaping to his feet.</p><p>“What the fuck is that!” he exclaimed.</p><p>“Shh,” Bev hissed, clamping him round the shoulder without taking her eyes off the zombie. “It’s baby’s first words.”</p><p>“You’re insane,” Eddie said, not shaking her off. “They can’t talk.”</p><p>The walker tried again. “Rrrrrr,” he said, then stopped. Grooves appeared in his brow. His skin was still clean from yesterday, and the glow from the fire washed him yellow-orange-red. He barely even looked like a zombie; that much hadn’t changed since his bath. And he still remembered his name, evidently.</p><p>Eddie wanted to shove a knife through his eye.</p><p>“So, it starts with ‘r’,” said Stan. “Ronny? Rufus? Rebecca?”</p><p>Not-Reggie jerked his head to the side. Then he did it again, but with more control and intent. He was shaking his head. He was shaking his <em>damn </em>head.</p><p>Beverly leaned forward eagerly. “Riley-Ryan-Rory-Reagan?” she asked in rapid fire.</p><p>Not-Reggie shrunk back against his tree and looked off into the distance, obviously growing tired of this game.</p><p>Or perhaps his sentience was a wave that washed back to the ocean, and he couldn’t remember what the noises meant anymore.</p><p>Ben wasn’t so quick to give up. “C’mon! We’re so close. Russell? Is it Russell? How about Robert?”</p><p>He didn’t respond.</p><p>Eddie didn’t like this game anymore.</p><p>So he ended it.</p><p>“It’s Richard,” he said.</p><p>The zombie’s head snapped to him like stitches pulling a wound closed, and the losers followed.</p><p>“Shit, Eddie,” Stan laughed, delighted. “How’d you know?”</p><p>Eddie didn’t answer him, too busy cataloguing walker’s movements as he leant his upper body forwards and stared up at Eddie with a desperate intensity.</p><p>Eddie dropped to a crouch, and those eyes traced his movement. It was much easier to see them without the dead glasses-frames covering half his face. They were big and brown and bloodshot, pupils blown wide open.</p><p><em>God, he must be so photosensitive,</em> Eddie thought. <em>And we’ve been dragging him along in broad daylight.</em></p><p>He dismissed the seed of pity before it could grow into something more dangerous.</p><p>“But you didn’t go by that, huh?” Eddie guessed.</p><p>Richard tilted his head to the side, then looked around at the others.</p><p>None of them could tell him the source of Eddie’s sudden insight.</p><p>Not even Eddie himself really knew.</p><p>“You were just a kid—like us. And I bet you were a rascal, too.”</p><p>Maybe it was all the hours he’d spent zombie-watching. He used to study them obsessively, could catalogue how far along into the sickness someone was in three seconds flat. He watched his mom dissolve into a rabid monster, and he was paying attention the entire damn time. And later on, on the darker nights, he’d sit up awake and make himself imagine the lives of the walkers he’d seen (or, god forbid, <em>killed) </em>that day. What kind of music did they like? How did they eat their eggs in the morning?</p><p>What nicknames did they have.</p><p>“So, no one calls you Richard,” Eddie continued. “You’re Richie.”</p><p><em>Richie </em>grinned. His lips were chapped and his teeth were a little yellow, but it wasn’t as unpleasant an expression as Eddie might have thought (definitely better without the bleeding gums).</p><p>Eddie pushed himself to his feet and stepped backwards. The others were all staring at him.</p><p>“D’you think if we got him a toothbrush he’d know how to use it?” Eddie asked. “Stan said no already.”</p><p>“Ask Bill,” Beverly said—a typical response. Even divided as the group was (into hunters and gatherers, Stan had once joked), it was an unspoken rule that Bill was the breaker of ties. The decider of Big Things. Unless he decided wrong, in which case the arguing never ended.</p><p>“Oh,” said Ben. He received several confused looks, so he continued, “Who’s gonna explain about Richie when we get back to Safehouse tomorrow?”</p><p>Stalemate.</p><p>Cricket noises.</p><p>Richie burped.</p><p>“Gross,” said Eddie.</p><p>The others all looked at him in vindication; apparently speaking was enough to count as ‘volunteering’.</p><p>“Fine,” Eddie allowed, “but only because Mike likes me best.”</p><p>Everyone disagreed at once.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Safehouse was a fucked-up looking building. It was two storeys high, with a spacious attic and two chimneys jutting out at odd angles. Parts of it looked like they’d been grafted on after the fact, like a mutated virus—a side porch here, an attic window there, a fourth upstairs bedroom anywhere. No care had been taken to match the construction materials with the rest of the house, and yet it was perfectly structurally sound. Eddie admired it for that.</p><p>It sat on its own at the end of a dirt driveway announced by a grand wooden gate. It was surrounded by a few acres of fields, and then a few more for good measure. It was bordered on the back by a forest (a sparsely populated wood that was recovering nicely from years of over-harvesting thanks to the boom in Dead Things it could turn into nutrients), on the left by a decently sized barn that no longer held livestock (not for lack of Mike trying; they either got sick and died, got eaten by a stray walker, or they were Bertha—the one goat he’d managed to keep alive—in which case they refused to set foot in the barn seemingly on principle), and on the right by what was actually the very reason Bill and Mike had claimed the house for themselves three winters ago: a fully operational wind turbine, as tall as the house itself. The energy it collected was enough to power the house, and probably about fifty more houses if they could figure out how the wiring worked. Not much engineering expertise to be found in a group of kids who hadn’t graduated junior high, but they scraped by—well, Ben scraped by, and the rest of them tried to follow along.</p><p>Whenever they were in the same place for long enough to gossip, the losers liked to come up with theories about the people who must have owned the place <em>before.</em></p><p>Bev liked to say it was a cult on account of the eight bedrooms in the house and the strange decorations that had been left everywhere. Eddie could admit that the little wire animal sculptures that were driven into the ground near the vegetable patch with spikes had a certain pseudo-religious energy to them.</p><p>Ben liked to say that it was a normal family who were worried about the environment. Worried enough to be the only farmhouse in Maine that functioned autonomously, off the grid—at least, the only one that any of them had ever seen.</p><p>Eddie liked to say it was aliens, because Stan liked to say it was a tinhatted-starwatching-doomsday-prepping-area-51-believing wackjob, and Eddie thought it would be funny if the opposite were true.</p><p>And then Mike would back him up, and say, <em>maybe they built the turbine as a statue to their gods, </em>and nod solemnly.</p><p>Bill liked to say something different every time. Sometimes it was a child who had been cursed to look like a house, and the turbine was their toy—like those plastic little windmills you get at a carnival. Sometimes it didn’t even exist until Bill and Mike found it; it sprung from the ground fully-formed (<em>like Aphrodite from the ocean, </em>Ben said, but no one knew what he was talking about). No matter what he said, all of them listened.</p><p>The stories weren’t as important as the facts, though. And the facts were these: the losers had claimed a hefty piece of real estate. They had enough electricity to power the oven and the stovetop and listen to hours of static on the radio with. They were damn fucking lucky that Bill and Mike had found it three years ago and decided to share it with whoever asked nicely.</p><p>Before that, Eddie had just been wandering through small town after small town, lost and barely coping. The others’ had been doing much of the same; they’d all left their home towns once the last of their families had died, and none of them liked what they found on the road.</p><p>But just because things were better now didn’t mean they were alright. They still had to work for this life they were hoping to build, and fuckers like the Bowers gang weren’t keen on making it easy for them. Figured; even with rabid monsters around, it was still bullies that caused them the most grief.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Mike was standing at the front gate when they arrived. He was sharpening a branch into a stake, which might have been threatening if Eddie didn’t know him so well. It was probably just for his zucchinis, or something.</p><p>“Hey,” he called as they approached. He frowned, nodding to Richie bringing up the lead. “Who’s your friend.”</p><p>Eddie opened his mouth to explain, then closed it again. He didn’t really know where to start.</p><p>“Richie,” said Richie.</p><p>Eddie whipped around to stare at him. Richie blinked as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. Then he caught sight of Bertha the goat rounding the corner of the barn and his eyes went wide.</p><p>“Jesus, okay.” Eddie gestured wildly. “Mike: we’ve adopted a walker. Don’t fucking ask me why; I know how fucked up that sounds. But he seems mostly tame, so I think we should just throw him in the barn before he eats Bertha. Hey! Asshole.”</p><p>Richie’s head snapped towards him guiltily. He was pressed against the fence, one leg perched on the bottom rung as if to hoist him over. The barbed wire that was spooled around the top rung pressed into his belly, poking small holes in Eddie’s Bowie shirt. Thankfully, Eddie couldn’t see any blood. Yet.</p><p>“No. Bad zombie. Back the hell up. You can’t eat her.”</p><p>Richie tilted his head to the side.</p><p>Stan laughed and Mike muttered something under his breath that sounded like, <em>what the fuck is happening. </em></p><p>“Oh, I don’t think so, fucko. You can’t try that shit on me.” Eddie pointed at him. “I just heard you say your damn name—we all did—so I know you can understand me. D’you want me to say it in another language? Because I will. O-nay eat-ay Ertha-bay.”</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Richie looked between a blissfully unaware Bertha and Eddie’s accusing finger. His shoulders slumped and he backed away from the fence.</p><p>“O-kay. Well,” Mike said, clearly struggling to process. “I guess I’ll go clear out the barn?”</p><p>He fled through the front gates.</p><p>Bev clapped Eddie across the shoulder. “You’ve got this from here?”</p><p>It wasn’t really a question, because she was off down the path before Eddie could answer. Ben smiled at him apologetically, then jogged to catch up with her.</p><p>Eddie looked over at Stan, then at Richie. The latter was staring longingly at Bertha while she munched on some grass, and the former just looked amused.</p><p>“I guess I’ll go find him something to eat?” he offered.</p><p>Eddie sighed. “Sure, and that leaves me to herd Fido into the doghouse, huh? And then who’s talking to Bill?”</p><p>Stan made a face like swallowing a lemon. “Think he’ll be mad?”</p><p>“Honestly?” Eddie started walking down the path, and Richie followed without having to be told. “I have no idea.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Bill was surprisingly open to the idea. Really all it took to convince him was for Eddie to say, “Bev thought it was a good idea,” and he was sold. You honestly couldn’t convince Eddie enough to analyse that dynamic if you tried; he didn’t think he’d ever understand the way Bill and Ben both fawned over her—sure, she was great and all, but… Eddie just didn’t get it. Though it had been a few months since he’d noticed Bill give her any special treatment; he and Mike spent most of their time together, now. So maybe Eddie wouldn’t have to put up with any more doe-eyes.</p><p>He put it out of his mind as he stomped down the entrance hall of Safehouse, not caring about his muddy shoes on the carpet because it was the end-damn-times and his mother couldn’t tell him not to anymore. But he took them off before he climbed the stairs, because the carpet up there was nicer, and he wasn’t an animal.</p><p>He heard Stan and Mike rifling through the pantry from down the hall, laughing as they tried to find something for Richie to eat. Eddie took the stairs two at a time as Mike crowed in victory. “Deer thigh! Bottom of the freezer, baby.”</p><p>“Don’t call me baby,” joked Stan.</p><p>Eddie paused at the top of the stairs, but the music from Bev’s room was too loud to hear the rest of their conversation. Eddie ducked passed her open door, avoiding peeking in (one time he accidentally got an eyeful of her and Ben making out, and they hadn’t found his loud gagging amusing <em>at all). </em></p><p>Eddie’s room was at the end of the hall on the right. It was smaller than the room he’d grown up in, but a lot better decorated. Not that he’d really tried; the place had just been this way when they arrived, and Eddie caught sight of the bright colors and big bay windows in this room and staked his claim. It was the special kind of happy-hideous colors and patterns that he’d used draw in the margins of his school books, or stare at through the windows of clothes shops. It wasn’t <em>presentable, </em>and it wasn’t <em>neat, </em>and sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night and had to fight the urge to scratch the paint off the walls and bleach the whole thing white, but. It was his.</p><p>He unpacked his things from his backpack, setting aside the items from their supply run that needed to go in communal spaces. He looked out the window as he placed his folded clothes in the first draw of the dresser and saw Mike and Stan opening the doors to the barn, still-frozen deer thigh in Mike’s hands.</p><p><em>This shouldn’t be so easy, </em>he thought. It worried him, how normal <em>it </em>was becoming. <em>Him. </em>Richie. Inviting a walker to live with them went against all of his instincts; he’d made that annoyingly clear. They were supposed to be irredeemable; beyond all help. You were supposed to give up on them, and not have to think too hard about burying a knife in one’s eye. They were supposed to be mindless monsters.</p><p>They weren’t supposed to be able to say their name.</p><p>And yet.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie made it thirteen days before he went stir crazy.</p><p>Everyone at Safehouse just seemed to have a <em>thing</em>.</p><p>Mike had his vegetables and his garden, and the chickens he was trying to keep alive, and his reading—they picked him up a few new books every supply run; they couldn’t really afford to be choosy about it, but he was always grateful anyway—and repairing a section of the southern fence that Bowers and his gang had taken a few baseball bats to while the hunting party had been on the supply run (annoying as property damage was, Eddie was just glad that no one got hurt this time).</p><p>Bill had his writing—he’d written four novels already, but the losers had only been allowed to read one so far and Eddie'd read it twice already—and his peach trees were in season, so he was set on learning through trial-and-error how to make jam.</p><p>Stan had his drawing—he liked to document the things he’d seen, Eddie respected the instinct—and his bird watching—this, Eddie didn’t understand enough to respect—and his endless supply of puzzles to keep him entertained.</p><p>Bev had her target practice (which had lately transitioned away from throwing darts at cans to sharpening up her bow and arrow skills on the wildlife of the woods for Richie to munch on, with Mike’s help). She also liked to listen to music on her record player, and she liked to sew and ‘make things’—sometimes clothes, sometimes just… funky little objects that found their way into the others’ rooms. Eddie could never tell what they were meant to be, but he liked them anyway.</p><p>Ben listened to music with Bev a lot, and read with Stanley, and made jam with Bill, and grew things with Mike. But mostly, Ben liked to spend time at the wind turbine. He would spend hours out there, scribbling and sketching out its insides in the hope that one day he could figure out how it worked well enough to build another one.</p><p>Even Richie had things to do. He was free to roam around the front gate in a thirty foot radius—that was the longest chain Mike could find. He liked to play a game with Bertha that Eddie called ‘That Goat Is So Stupid Yet She Thinks She’s God’. It involved Bertha walking into Richie’s space, chewing on some weeds while she pretended not to notice him creeping towards her, then sprinting off gleefully whenever he got too close. By the third or fourth time, Eddie could have sworn that Richie found it just as funny as she did.</p><p>So, everyone except Eddie had hobbies. And what did he do? He ran around the fields in circles, because he was too smart to go anywhere else by himself and the others were too boring to want to go exploring all day, every day. He did everything and anything he could do make his brain shut up, and it only worked some of the time.</p><p>He also listened to music, when he could steal the record player from Bev’s room (he didn’t manage that very often), or when he was bored enough that Bev’s collection of angry-shouty rock music was appealing.</p><p>That’s where he currently was; lying on his back on her carpet and ranting while she sewed a small piece of felt into something vaguely spherical.</p><p>He’d started with, “He’s really fucking weird, you know? Like, the other day it was my turn to take him to the outhouse—which, thank <em>god </em>he remembers how to use that by himself, could you imagine?—and it’d been like, a full ten minutes of nothing, so I told him I was coming in and I’d knife him if he wasn’t decent, and I opened the door and—Bev, I swear to you, he was just standing there and staring at his face in the mirror. I could hear the damn twilight zone theme playing, it was so freaky–” –but he was now on the topic of clothing. Specifically, how annoying it was to only have two shirts, and how it was pretty likely that no one else was going to donate some clothes to Richie for when he inevitably ruined his current ensemble—<em>and let’s be real, it’s getting pretty gross already, it’s been almost two weeks, Bev</em>—and then Eddie would only have <em>one </em>shirt–</p><p>“Fuck, dude, just go into town and get some fabric you like. I’ll just make you more clothes,” she interrupted.</p><p>Eddie sat up. “Really? You’ll come with me?”</p><p>Beverly made a face. ”No.” She held up her half-finished felt-ball. “I’m busy. Just take Richie, since you love him so much.”</p><p>Eddie pulled a face at her then looked out her window, forgetting it faced the backyard. The trees in the distance looked back, taunting him.</p><p>
  <em>You’re gonna go into town by yourself with a walker, dumbshit?</em>
</p><p>“Fuck you, trees,” Eddie muttered.</p><p>“You’re so weird,” said Bev.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It was a three hour walk to the nearest town.</p><p>For two hours and fifty-five minutes, Richie didn’t say a single thing. This, of course, wouldn’t be noteworthy if Eddie didn’t know for a fact that he <em>could </em>talk when he wanted to.</p><p>Which just made him wonder why he wouldn’t want to.</p><p><em>Maybe the disease-ridden feral boy doesn’t want to be my friend, </em>he thought, laughing to himself. But the more he thought about it, the less funny it became.</p><p>He looked over at Richie, who was keeping pace a few feet behind the to the right. He was staring at his shoes—a donation from Bill.</p><p>“You’re gonna give yourself scoliosis if you walk like that,” Eddie said.</p><p>Richie looked up at him blankly. His eyes cleared a little, then sparkled mischievously as he raised his arms and started clomping along like a mummy in a bad horror movie.</p><p>Eddie started to laugh, stopped himself, cleared his throat, and said, “you’re not funny.”</p><p>“Am, too,” replied Richie. The words might have been petulant, but his voice was too hoarse and distant, like he was speaking from a radio that wasn’t tuned right.</p><p>“Oh, now he speaks.”</p><p>He shot Richie a look, but he was back to staring at his shoes. Eddie sighed, letting it go.</p><p>The town looked worse than the last time he’d been. The losers had raided every last scrap of food from the loose collection of houses and shops, so there’d been no need to visit for the last few months. The Bowers gang apparently thought differently.</p><p>Eddie whistled as he stood in the middle of the main street and surveyed the damage. There were chunks missing from some of the houses, shitty graffiti on most surfaces, and a few still-burning fires.</p><p>“Richie?” Eddie hissed, looking over his shoulder.</p><p>Richie was poking at a pile of trash curiously.</p><p>“Dude, get over here. Don’t touch that.”</p><p>Richie stared at him and shoved his hand in the pile.</p><p>“Jesus. You’re so gross.”</p><p>Richie bared his teeth in an approximation of a smile. This time when Eddie beckoned him over, he came.</p><p>Eddie pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and threw it at Richie’s face. “Wipe that shit off, don’t make a sound, and stick close to me. Okay?”</p><p>Richie blinked at him. He wiped his hand on the rag with feigned grace, like he was the bloody queen of England.</p><p>Eddie turned and started walking so Richie wouldn’t see his smile. “If you see a fuckhead with a mullet and a baseball bat, you have my permission to eat his intestines.”</p><p>Richie licked his lips obnoxiously.</p><p>“Stop that. Ugh.”</p><p>He laughed.</p><p> </p><p>Whatever vandalistic fantasies the Bowers’ gang were acting out on the once-proud town of Whats-Its-Name, Maine (the town sign was illegible, and looked like it had been since before the world even ended), none of it seemed to involve the destruction of wardrobes.</p><p>So Eddie had free reign on mothball-eaten sweaters and cargo shorts. He managed to find some sheets in one of the houses that were a nice enough fabric, and he was just shoving them into his backpack when he heard a noise of excitement from the other bedroom.</p><p>Eddie rushed in, half expecting to see Richie sinking his teeth into his second rat of the day, but he found him standing before an open chest of drawers instead.</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>Richie grinned and pulled out a pile of Hawaiian shirts from the drawer. They were garishly colored and big enough to fit them both at once.</p><p>“No,” Eddie said.</p><p>Richie hugged them to his chest. “Yes.”</p><p>Eddie paused. “Are you messing with me, or do you genuinely want those? They’re fuck ugly, Richie. I’m just warning you in case you’ve forgotten what fashion is.”</p><p>Richie stared at the crumpled shirts in his arms. He cleared his throat and licked his lips, a small groove between his brows. He looked like he was about to say something profound.</p><p>“I think they’re pretty sexy.”</p><p>Right. Of course.</p><p>Eddie snorted and tried to smother it, but the laugh bubbled out anyway.</p><p>Richie started to laugh with him. His laugh was goofy, and it made Eddie laugh harder.</p><p>Then Eddie realized who he was laughing with, and he sobered up real fast.</p><p>“C’mon, let’s get back before it gets dark.”</p><p>He turned and started down the stairs before Richie could respond.</p><p>One of the last buildings on the main street was an optometrist. It went: hardware store; house; house; house; optometrist. The idea of it always made Eddie laugh; what was a small town like this doing with its own optometrist? But it wasn’t a very impressive store (especially now, with the windows caved in and weeds growing inside), and it shared its space with a chemist (which Eddie had already fully raided), and there were little hand-written signs on the back wall about specials and new frame options, so Eddie felt bad for laughing.</p><p>He barely glanced at it on his way past, then paused; the sound of Richie’s shuffling steps had stopped. He turned, knife at the ready, but Richie was just standing there in the middle of the street and staring at the shop.</p><p>Eddie frowned as he tucked his knife back in his belt. He looked between Richie and the dusty glasses that still lined the shelves, then it dawned on him. Richie had been wearing glasses when they first found him.</p><p>He’d lost them in the swimming pool, but he must have had them for a reason. And he’d kept them relatively safe despite his condition, for who-knew how long (Eddie could normally guess how fresh a walker was, but Richie liked to throw him for a loop, didn’t he?).</p><p>“C’mon,” Eddie said, nodding towards the shop.</p><p>Richie startled guiltily, like Eddie had caught him with his hand in a human-cookie-jar.</p><p>Eddie nodded again, and Richie looked profoundly grateful. He walked forwards.</p><p>Eddie followed, making sure to keep Richie in front of him. Richie didn’t seem to mind, being too busy trying to climb over the busted-open door.</p><p>“So, how blind are you?” Eddie asked, hopping behind the counter.</p><p>Richie ignored him as he stared at the shelf.</p><p>“Minus three? Minus five?”</p><p>Richie didn’t react.</p><p>“Jesus, minus eight? How many fingers am I holding up?”</p><p>Richie turned to look at him finally. “Three?” he guessed.</p><p>Eddie snorted. “Try zero.” He crouched down and started rifling through the drawers below the counter. Some of them were labelled quite helpfully with numbers, but some of them just said things like ‘February’ and ‘Wilson’. Eddie pulled out some options, then slid them across the counter at Richie.</p><p>Richie moved slowly as he tried them on, hands shaking a little like he was pushing his body through molasses.</p><p>Eddie could tell when he tried the right pair. Richie went still, then looked over his shoulder at the empty street.</p><p>“Bingo?” Eddie asked.</p><p>Richie turned back to him and took a step backwards, a strange expression on his face. Richie’s eyes had always had a sort of glassiness to them that Eddie had chalked up to him being not-quite-there-in-the-brain (disease ridden cannibal, anyone?). But now Eddie was thinking, <em>hey</em>. <em>Maybe the poor fuck was just blind this whole time</em>. Thirty percent of all road accidents could be attributed to poor vision or visibility. And what had the last few weeks been, if not a car crash in slow motion?</p><p>But was still staring, and hadn’t stopped by the time Eddie counted to thirty in his head.</p><p>“What, I got something on my shirt, wise guy?” he asked, breaking the silence.</p><p>Richie blinked. The movement was magnified by the glasses; larger than life.</p><p>“Just some piss and blood and shit,” Richie replied. His voice sounded more vacant than ever before. “Looks good on you.”</p><p>Eddie couldn’t help but check his shirt. It was still a neat, clean yellow.</p><p>“Yeah, and you would know,” he shot back, hopping back over the counter. “Come on, we’re losing daylight.”</p><p>Richie didn’t talk much for the walk home. He just trotted along in Eddie’s shadow, twisting his head this way and that to look at the leaves on the trees, birds flying overhead, the weeds growing out of a barn window, and the cracks in the road up ahead. He stumbled over his shoelaces a few times, but he didn’t stop to tie them and Eddie sure as shit wasn’t going to.</p><p>When they got back to Safehouse, Eddie—for the first time—felt bad about locking Richie back into his chain.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Beverly laughed for ten minutes when she saw the Hawaiian shirts.</p><p>“What?” Eddie crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “Richie liked them.”</p><p>That just made her laugh harder.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It started raining the next day and didn’t stop for a week.</p><p>The second the pitter-patter sounded, Ben unchained Richie and locked him in the barn. Walkers always went underground (not literally, Eddie didn’t think) when it rained, so there was no sense in leaving him out in the cold. Eddie didn’t even argue when Mike herded Bertha into the barn later that day; Richie had stopped trying to take a bite out of her. And even if he did eat her, it wasn’t like she was a productive member of their little society. All she did was eat weeds and yell when she saw a spider.</p><p>On the second day of rain, everyone helped build a dam upstream so Mike’s veggie patch wouldn’t flood.</p><p>On the third day, they ran out of frozen deer for Richie.</p><p>On the fourth day, Bill agreed to share their canned beef with him.</p><p>On the fifth day, Eddie woke up to the sound of yelling in the backyard.</p><p>Mike was there calmly digging up half-grown cabbages and carrots, water up to his shins. Bill was ranting at Stan about something—the rain drowned out the words, but Eddie could take a wild guess.</p><p>He raced downstairs and out onto the back porch. Bev was leaning against the railing, Ben resting his head on her shoulder. Their hair was damp from the still-pouring rain.</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>“Dam’s gone.” Bev shook her head, eyes as stormy as the sky above. “Bowers must have got to it. There’s no way it just washed away.”</p><p>Eddie agreed. They’d built it too well for that.</p><p>“Shit.”</p><p>Bill’s shouted words started coming out in angry syllables, his stutter rearing its head.</p><p>Mike gave up on rescuing the zucchinis. He handed the full basket of drowned vegetables to Stan, then stepped close to a still-stuttering Bill.</p><p>Eddie watched, rapt, as Mike lifted his hand and cupped Bill’s chin, silencing him. Bill’s shoulders dropped and he closed his eyes. Mike kissed him softly.</p><p>No one reacted.</p><p>Eddie’s hands were shaking. He couldn’t hear the rain anymore.</p><p>Ben said something to Beverly, and she laughed. Stan walked past Eddie into the house.</p><p>He paused, then turned back.</p><p>“Eddie? You okay?”</p><p>Bill’s head was in Mike’s neck now. He was running a soothing hand down his back. They were soaked through with rain.</p><p>Eddie wanted to scream, <em>when the fuck did that happen. </em>He wanted to scream, <em>how did everyone else know this but me.</em></p><p>He looked at Stan’s concerned, mud-splashed face.</p><p>“Bill will be okay,” Stan comforted. “And Mike can replant.”</p><p>Eddie nodded. He couldn’t make himself speak.</p><p>Stan reached out to touch him, but Eddie stepped back. His skin was crawling.</p><p>He escaped back to his room and spent the next two days alternating between staring at the rain through his window, quietly listening to music with Bev, and not knowing how to act.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When Eddie woke up to the sound of birds chirping instead of the sound of rain hitting the tin roof, he grinned so wide it hurt his cheeks.</p><p>He whistled as he pulled his socks up high, threw a coat over his shirt, galloped downstairs, and shoved his feet into a pair of rain boots.</p><p>The sun was speaking through the clouds when Eddie stuck his head out of the kitchen window. He rushed through breakfast—oats and dried apple slices—then he was out into the front garden.</p><p>He made it to the front gate before he stopped to think about what he was doing.</p><p>He couldn’t go off by himself, but no one else was awake yet. And where would he even go?</p><p>He kicked the fence post gently, dislodging a mushroom that had sprouted at its base.</p><p>Eddie crouched down and smiled at it.</p><p>“Great idea, little buddy,” he said, pushing its stem back into the ground.</p><p>When Eddie shoved open the barn doors, Bertha raced out like she had the devil on her tail. Eddie had to leap out of her way, hand held to his chest.</p><p>“Run, Forrest, run!” came a voice from inside the barn.</p><p>Eddie turned to see Richie standing there, arms in the air.</p><p>Eddie snorted into his hand.</p><p>Richie dropped his hands and grinned at him. His hair was in knots, with stray pieces of straw sticking out at odd angles. His shirt was a crumpled mess, and there was a rip in his shorts. But he was grinning like a loon anyway.</p><p>“I didn’t eat her,” he said, doing something strange with his arms that might have been a victory dance. “Are you proud of me, Eddie Spaghetti?”</p><p>“Geez, I miss when all you did was grunt and drool,” Eddie said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “And no, Richie. Not eating pets is a depressingly low bar. Here,” he tossed the bag at him, and Richie caught it with a sad frown. “Get changed. We’re going mushrooming.”</p><p>“We?” Richie asked, struggling with the zipper.</p><p>Eddie crossed his arms and shrugged, then uncrossed them so he wouldn’t look so defensive. “If you want to stay in this stinky barn for another day, that’s fine too.”</p><p>Richie looked around the barn and sniffed like it hadn’t occurred to him that it didn’t smell of roses.</p><p>Eddie shoved the door closed and leant against it. “Hurry up.”</p><p>Bertha raced by as she did another lap of the house.<em> At least she can’t eat Mike’s vegetables anymore</em>, Eddie thought bitterly.</p><p>Richie appeared on Eddie’s left. He’d pulled most of the straw out of his hair and was staring down at his shoes sheepishly. The Hawaiian shirt he was wearing was garish and bright in the grey morning, but it fit him well. Bev had done a good job at guessing his measurements.</p><p>Eddie half-expected Richie to make some crack about how sexy he was now—<em>Am I irresistible yet, Eddie, </em>and then he’d waggle his eyebrows, but he didn’t say anything.</p><p>“Are you hungry?” Eddie asked, “Because I don’t think you can eat mushrooms.”</p><p>Richie shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “No.”</p><p>Just that; <em>no. </em></p><p>Eddie pointed at a basket hanging in the barn. “Grab that, will you?”</p><p>Richie shuffled towards it, pulled it into his arms, then shuffled back.</p><p>Eddie sighed and started walking.</p><p>Richie followed.</p><p>They found a few mushrooms in the fields, and Eddie had to stop each time and check them against the book he’d brought—<em>A Beginners Guide to Mushrooms in America. </em>He’d snuck it from Stan’s room earlier, but not before poking him awake, shoving the book under his nose, and announcing he was borrowing it. Stan had just groaned and rolled over.</p><p>Richie hadn’t said anything by the time the basket was a quarter full. They approached the forest, and Eddie spotted a tree that he recognised.</p><p>He laughed, and Richie looked at him curiously.</p><p>Eddie pointed. “See that tree? With the big branch?”</p><p>Richie nodded, following Eddie’s finger.</p><p>“I did a backflip off of that one time.”</p><p>Richie turned to him, eyes wide behind his glasses. “No way.”</p><p>Eddie scoffed. “Yes way. Bev bet Bill that he couldn’t do it, and I tried to tell him he’d break his damn neck trying, but then he <em>did </em>it and landed wonky and fell on his face. And I said, <em>I told you so, </em>and then he dragged me over there and told me to try. Mike said something like, <em>no way he’s gonna do it, </em>and Stan parked himself under the branch and told me he’d catch me when I fell off–” Eddie was talking fast, like he did when he cared about what he was saying. Richie was still staring at him with a kind of constipated look on his face, so Eddie continued, “–but I didn’t fall. I’m not as tall as Bill—or as brave, or whatever—but I did it. Landed on my feet and everything.”</p><p>Eddie laughed and looked back at the tree. That was one of the first days they’d spent together; they barely knew each other, and they were all just messed up kids, but fuck if Eddie didn’t know he loved them all, even back then.</p><p>“Do it again,” Richie said.</p><p>Eddie startled. “What? Are you serious?”</p><p>Richie poked his tongue out. “You chicken?”</p><p>“No,” Eddie said. Richie started clucking and jutting his neck out ridiculously.</p><p>“God, how old are you? Fine, I’ll do it,” Eddie said, starting towards the tree.</p><p>Richie cheered.</p><p>Eddie was grumbling to himself as he approached it, but his mind cleared the second he started climbing.</p><p>Hand on bark, foot on wood, grip and pull and push, and all he could think about was the past.</p><p>The last time he’d done this, he still missed his mom. It had gone like this: Eddie found out all his fucking pills were fake, and his inhaler was useless, and there was nothing wrong with him; Eddie was so angry he didn’t speak for a week; Eddie’s mom got sick, and his neighbours got sick, and his friends’ parents started dying; Eddie forgot about being angry; Eddie was alone; Eddie found his family. He didn’t start looking backwards for a long time.</p><p>He’d barely even started.</p><p>But he was looking back now as he stood on that branch. It still held his weight. Richie was watching him and pretending to eat from a bucket of invisible popcorn.</p><p>And Eddie turned his back, bent his knees, and jumped.</p><p>In the air, memories rushed past his vision.</p><p>He was eight and he was in the park with his aunt, and he felt free enough to jump from the top of the slide. He scraped his knees, but he didn’t cry, and it didn’t hurt, and she didn’t care.</p><p>He was ten and he was with Rachel from down the road and they were climbing to the top of the tallest tree in her backyard. He could see the whole town from the top of it. She got a splinter in her finger and laughed until he pulled it out.</p><p>He was twelve and he was at a beach for the first time. His grandma was asleep on a towel under a big yellow umbrella, and he swam out so far that he could sink and sink under the waves and his feet didn’t touch the sand. He couldn’t stop thinking about it for months.</p><p>The wind whipped through Eddie’s hair like all the times he’d ever run so fast he couldn’t even breathe; run so fast his feet touched the ground before he even asked them to.</p><p>And now when his feet met the ground with a thud, all he could think was,<em> maybe</em> <em>there wasn’t anything wrong with me.</em></p><p>The thought was like oil on the surface of a lake. It wouldn’t dilute and it wouldn’t sink.</p><p>Richie started clapping. Eddie started and turned.</p><p>“Encore!” Richie yelled.</p><p>“I’m not doing it again, asshole,” Eddie said, but he couldn’t help but smile. “C’mon, I bet there’s loads of oyster mushrooms in there.” He shot a thumb over his shoulder.</p><p>Richie pulled the basket back into his arms and trotted towards him. “Were you in a circus or something? Were your parents killed in a fire and you were adopted by an eccentric millionaire who taught you how to fight crime?”</p><p>“Dude, I love those comics,” Eddie said, distracted from pulling a sizable chestnut mushroom from the ground.</p><p>Richie blinked. “Me, too,” he breathed, like it was something he’d just remembered.</p><p>“Who’s your favourite villain?” Eddie asked, tossing the mushroom into the basket.</p><p>“He shoots! He scores!” Cried Richie, lifting the basket over his head. “And is that even a question? Riddler. Obviously.”</p><p>“You <em>would </em>say that.”</p><p>“Ehh, Tony,” Richie said, sounding like a side character in a bad mafia movie. “There’s no need for cruel words, ah? I’ll break your daughter’s kneecaps.”</p><p>He couldn’t help but laugh.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie knocked on Bill’s door.</p><p>He only had to wait a few moments before it was pulled open.</p><p>“Eddie?” Bill asked, rubbing at his eyes.</p><p>“Hey,” Eddie said, shuffling his feet. “Can I talk to you?”</p><p>Bill dropped his hand, concerned. “Sure, yeah. Of c-course.”</p><p>He opened the door wider and stepped back to let Eddie in.</p><p>Eddie was about to enter when he caught sight of a shape on Bill’s bed. It was Mike. He was wearing one of Bill’s shirts, face pressed into his pillow, and he was fast asleep.</p><p>“What did you want to talk about?” Bill asked.</p><p>Eddie’s eyes snapped back towards him. He could feel blood rushing to his cheeks. “Oh—um. It’s—there’s some mushrooms downstairs. For canning.”</p><p>Bill frowned. “Oh...kay?”</p><p>Eddie looked between Bill and Mike. Mike blinked awake then pushed himself upright slowly when he caught sight of Eddie.</p><p>“Yeah, and, I’m, um. Happy for you.”</p><p>Bill’s eyebrows met his hairline.</p><p>Mike just smiled. “Thanks, man,” he said, croaky from sleep.</p><p>Eddie nodded a few too many times, then left.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Ben!” Eddie called.</p><p>Ben looked down from his perch atop the wind turbine. His hair was flying every which way, but he grinned when he saw the bowl of soup Eddie was holding up to him.</p><p>“C’mon up.” Ben shuffled out of the way of the ladder, then patted the spot next to him.</p><p>Eddie poked his tongue out as he climbed, careful to hold the bowl completely upright. Ben was laughing at him when he got to the top.</p><p>“Hey,” Eddie complained, pushing the bowl into his hands. “I bring you lunch for this?”</p><p>Ben took a swig straight from it. “Sorry. You just looked really focused.”</p><p>Eddie huffed and turned to take in the view. The wind turbine was only as tall as the house, so it wasn’t like he could see forever, but. It was still nice.</p><p>“Wanna see what I’m doing?” Ben asked in between slurps.</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>Ben smiled and pointed at his journal. Eddie crossed his legs and leaned close to read the words. “Dude, I don’t understand any of that.”</p><p>Ben sighed. “Me neither. Mostly. I’m getting there.”</p><p>Eddie nudged his side with his elbow. “I bet you are. You’re the smartest guy alive.”</p><p>“I’ll take your word for it.”</p><p>Eddie smiled and turned back to the view. They sat in silence for a little while as Ben finished his lunch.</p><p>“So, you–” Ben started, then paused abruptly.</p><p>Eddie frowned at him. Ben was staring at something in the woods. Eddie followed his line of sight, but all he saw was trees.</p><p>“What is it?” he asked, hushed and urgent.</p><p>Ben shook his head. “Nothing, I just thought I saw… Wait, there!”</p><p>He pointed. This time Eddie saw it too.</p><p>It was Henry Bowers and three of his goons. They were chasing something fast and human-shaped, and they were getting closer.</p><p>“<em>What the–”</em></p><p>“Eddie, is that...” Ben asked, horrified. “Is that a walker?”</p><p>Eddie saw the thing stumble, its ankle twisting unnaturally. It looked behind as Bowers hurled a rock at its head. Its cheek came loose and blood dripped out sluggishly. He heard the sound of the humans laughing as it pushed itself to its feet and tried to hobble away.</p><p>They were still laughing when Patrick shot an arrow through its eye. It dropped to the ground, twitching.</p><p>There was the sound of rattling chains. Eddie turned in time to see Richie straining against the manacle on his ankle. He was as far out of the gates as he could be, and he was staring right at the bowers. He tried again to yank his chain, and the fence post it was attached to wobbled dangerously.</p><p>Henry took notice. He turned to say something to his idiotic friends. Belch unsheathed a sword from his back.</p><p>Eddie started scrambling down the wind turbine.</p><p>“Eddie! Wait, don’t!” called Ben.</p><p>Eddie jumped the last few feet and sprinted towards the front gates. He heard the front door of Safehouse open behind him, but he didn’t turn to look.</p><p>He reached Richie before he could yank at his chains again.</p><p>“Hey!” Eddie hissed, stomping down on the end of the chain. Richie turned to look at him, movements jerky. His eyes were wide and unfocused, and he bared his teeth at Eddie like a cornered fox.</p><p>There was the sound of sharp metal hitting flesh, then a thud. Eddie glanced across the field. Belch picked up the severed head of the walker and held it to the sky.</p><p>They were too far away to see their faces, but Eddie could tell Henry was grinning.</p><p>Richie started growling. Eddie stepped back instinctively, and Richie turned to him. He moved towards him, shoulders hunched. There was a look in his eyes that Eddie recognised all too well, for all that it was unfamiliar on Richie’s face.</p><p>It was bloodlust.</p><p>“Richie,” he warned, hand going to his waist. His palm met the fabric of his shirt, and he cursed as he backed further away. <em>The one time I don’t have my fucking knives, </em>he thought.</p><p>Richie’s eyes tracked his movement. That unnatural sound was still coming from his throat.</p><p>Eddie snuck a glance at Bowers. He was just standing there, watching. Belch was still holding that fucking head.</p><p>“Don’t do anything stupid, Richie,” Eddie said, holding his hands up.</p><p>Richie stepped towards him. His chest was heaving, lips bent up into a snarl.</p><p><em>Click, click. </em>Eddie squeezed his eyes shut. That was the unmistakable sound of Bev’s shotgun cocking from ten feet behind him.</p><p>Eddie had had enough of this. He put his hands down and stood his ground. “Either come at me or calm the fuck down,” he said, staring right into Richie’s eyes. “Because your friend over there–” he gestured across the field at the dead body of the walker, and Richie looked over and back again, “–isn’t gonna help you out here, pal.”</p><p>Richie tilted his head to the side. He looked like a wild thing; nothing at all like himself. It shouldn’t have been such a jarring juxtaposition.</p><p><em>This is what he’s supposed to be like, </em>Eddie couldn’t help but think. <em>But he’s not like this at all.</em></p><p>Eddie chanced a look behind him. The rest of the losers had gathered around the yard. Bev was the only one with her weapon drawn, but the rest of them looked ready to step in at a moment’s notice.</p><p>Eddie felt an odd surge of protectiveness, and it was for the wrong fucking person.</p><p>“C’mon, man,” Eddie pleaded. He dared to step closer to Richie. “Don’t make us hurt you. Please, Richie.”</p><p>Richie blinked at him. He jerked backwards, almost tripping over the chain at his feet. His glasses slipped down his nose, and the second he lifted his hand to push them back up, Eddie let out the breath he was holding.</p><p>“Shit,” Richie muttered. He looked down at his hands, then up at Eddie. His eyes were wide, brown, and sane. “Eddie?”</p><p>Something whizzed past Eddie’s face. There was a <em>thunk, </em>and Eddie stumbled back. He looked around wildly to see an arrow buried in the wood of the arch, and Patrick standing across the field with his bow still drawn.</p><p>Several things happened at once. Richie’s eyes went wide; he jumped towards Eddie; Bev’s shotgun went <em>bang; </em>and someone screamed.</p><p>Richie landed in front of Eddie, then turned his back to him and spread out his arms.</p><p>Eddie’s ears were ringing. He couldn’t breathe—there was no blood, was Richie okay?—who did Bev shoot, and who screamed–</p><p>Then he looked past Richie’s shoulder and saw Patrick on the ground. His head was thrown back in pain, and there was a bleeding hole in his calf.</p><p>“Are you okay?” Richie asked, turning back to Eddie and scanning him up and down.</p><p>“Me?” Eddie asked, still shellshocked. “Peachy.”</p><p>Bev sidled up behind him and slung a hand over his shoulder. “I’d call that a bullseye, wouldn’t you?”</p><p>Eddie couldn’t answer. He was staring at Henry, Victor and Belch as they helped Patrick to his feet and started for the forest. They didn’t bother to do anything about the carcass they’d left behind. Henry sent one last glance over his shoulder, and Eddie could’ve sworn he was looking at Richie.</p><p>“Hey, Eddie?” Bill asked, appearing on his other side. “D’you want to come inside?”</p><p>Richie’s head bobbed as he swallowed. He backed up a few paces and stared down at his shoes.</p><p>“Not really,” Eddie answered. “Mike?” He looked over his shoulder.</p><p>“Petrol?” Mike asked, meeting his gaze.</p><p>Eddie nodded. He marched towards the barn and made quick work of gathering supplies: sticks, cardboard, matches.</p><p>Mike met him outside the gates. They walked together across the field.</p><p>The body of the walker went up easily. Eddie made sure to stand back and upwind. He tried not to look at it burning, and tried not to think about the putrid smell that filled the air. The first few times he’d done this, he’d vomited his guts out. He was pretty close to doing so even now; he wasn’t too proud to admit that.</p><p>But he shoved the revolt away and stared at Richie instead.</p><p>He was sitting with his back to the fence, head pressed between his knees. He didn’t look okay.</p><p>“Hey,” Mike said, breaking the silence. Well, there was the sound of crackling flesh, but. Eddie wasn’t thinking about it.</p><p>“What?” Eddie asked.</p><p>“At least we got a free arrow.”</p><p>Eddie stared at his deadpan features for a few moments. He surprised himself when he started laughing.</p><p>Mike grinned back at him.</p><p>“You’re a sicko,” Eddie said, still snorting.</p><p>“I’ll tell Bill you said that,” Mike said.</p><p>“Bill’s a sicko, too,” Eddie replied, then froze. “Wait, no, I didn’t mean–”</p><p>Mike looked concerned. “Mean what?”</p><p>“That you’re...like, that you’re—that you’re sick, or–” Eddie stuttered. The urge to vomit was resurfacing with a vengeance. “I mean, compared to… Well, like, it’s. There’s nothing wrong with being...” Eddie searched for a word, but none of them sounded right.</p><p>“I know,” Mike said, still frowning. “Do <em>you </em>know that?”</p><p>“Y-yeah,” Eddie lied.</p><p>The corpse of what used to be a person gave one last crackle, and then it was just a pile of cinders.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eddie looked up from the mushroom he was slicing. The noise that caught his attention was coming from the front porch. He squinted through the afternoon sun to see Bev sitting on the front steps with yarn in her hands, bent over and laughing hysterically while Stan frowned down at a mess of knots and knitting needles. Looking past them to the front yard, he could see Richie sitting on the fence—Bill had taken off the barbed wire in that section days ago. His legs were dangling, shoelaces untied as he watched Bev and Stan like a puppy watches a tennis ball.</p><p>“Bev’s having a stroke out there, huh,” Bill commented from the stove.</p><p>“She’s teaching Stan how to knit. Gotta wonder why we weren’t invited,” Eddie said, sliding the pile of chopped mushrooms across the cutting board and into a bowl. “I could knit. What about me says I couldn’t knit, Bill?”</p><p>Bill snorted. “I think you’re overthinking it.”</p><p>Eddie looked out the window again. Bev had stopped laughing. Instead she was being pulled into a stand. Stan tugged her down the stairs and towards Richie.</p><p>He perked up as they approached. Stan threw his botched attempt at him, and he jumped down from the fence as he caught it. Stan said something to them, hands thrown in the air.</p><p>“I think her star pupil just quit,” Bill said.</p><p>“No, shit,” Eddie answered. “Here, your mushrooms.”</p><p>Bill took them gratefully, then pouted. “I asked for diced.”</p><p>Eddie was already halfway out the door. “Oh, did you? What a shame.”</p><p>Bill stared after him and sighed forlornly. “I guess I’ll just have to roll them.”</p><p>Eddie paused in the hallway, then peaked his head back into the kitchen. “What?”</p><p>“I made a pun,” Bill announced. “Dice? Roll? Get it?”</p><p>“You’re hilarious, buddy.”</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p><p>“So, what’s the mission, boss?” Richie asked, trampling through the woods alongside Eddie with all the subtlety of an ox. “Surveillance? Espionage?” He dropped his voice. “Domestic terrorism?”</p><p>Eddie bent down and picked up a stick. “We’re collecting firewood, dumbass. I told you that already.”</p><p>Richie frowned. “Did you?”</p><p>Eddie sent him a look. Richie had seemed kind of out of it this morning when Eddie unchained him. Maybe he had brain damage after all.</p><p>“Did you hit your head or something?”</p><p>Richie pretended to walk into a tree. “Doc, I’m cured!” he announced, throwing his hands up. “You’re a medical genius!”</p><p>“Why would that cure you?” Eddie asked, picking up another branch.</p><p>Richie curled his top lip. “Thienth tellth uth that hitting your head ith the cure to most ailmenth.”</p><p>Eddie gestured to the tree. “Do it again, I don’t think it worked properly.”</p><p>Richie dropped the act. “You know it hurts my feelings when you say stuff like that,” he said, hand pressed to his chest.</p><p>Eddie almost laughed, then he heard a twig snap deeper into the forest. He waved at Richie frantically, then mimed zipping his mouth up.</p><p>Richie frowned, tilting his head to the side.</p><p>Eddie heard another twig snap, then the steady thump of footsteps. A few of them.</p><p>And then the sound of Henry Bowers laughing.</p><p>Eddie swore up a storm in his head.</p><p>Richie was frozen, wide eyes staring in the direction of the noises. He looked about ready to start swinging.</p><p>Eddie placed the pile of sticks on the ground as quietly as he could then waved his hand in front of Richie’s face to get his attention.</p><p>“Hey,” he hissed, standing closer than he’d ever dared to before. “Richie, listen to me.” He shot a glance over his shoulder, and when he turned back the full force of Richie’s glass-eyed stare was on him. “You need to run. Okay?”</p><p>Richie shook his head so violently he almost dislodged his glasses.</p><p>Eddie set his jaw. “No, Richie. You have to run.”</p><p>“Eddie—” Richie started to protest.</p><p>“They’ll fucking <em>kill </em>you,” Eddie whispered harshly.</p><p>Richie’s mouth gaped open.</p><p>“Aren’t I already dead?” he asked. His tone was joking, but he was shaking.</p><p>The sound of Bowers and his friends were getting closer. They were shooting the shit; goofing around with each other like normal, non-psychopathic boys.</p><p>Eddie's heart was beating so fast he couldn’t count the beats if he tried.</p><p>“I’m not kidding, Richie. You need to go.”</p><p>“What about you?” he demanded. “I’m supposed to protect you.”</p><p>Eddie wanted to scream.</p><p>He pulled one of his knives from his belt and held it as close to Richie’s throat as he dared. “You either run or I cut your fucking throat out.”</p><p>Richie didn’t protest again. It looked for a second there like he actually believed Eddie would do it.</p><p>Eddie kept the knife in his hand as he ducked behind a tree. He closed his eyes and tried to listen past his breathing. He heard footsteps from two directions, and he heard the exact instant Bowers noticed them, too.</p><p>“You hear that, boys?” he asked. He was so close now that Eddie could hear every shuffle of his feet. “Sounds like we got ourselves another runner.”</p><p><em>Shit, </em>Eddie thought. He snuck a glance around the trunk of the tree and saw Belch and Victor whooping.</p><p>At least Patrick was still out of commission from his brush with Bev’s shotgun last week, though the thought offered little comfort to Eddie as he weighed his options.</p><p>Henry knocked an arrow and started forwards again, this time with determination.</p><p>Eddie knew that Richie couldn’t have made it very far, and he didn’t have a stealthy bone in his entire fucking body. He hit his head against the bark of the tree. His knuckles went white on the hilt of his knife as he looked up at the sun peaking through the canopy like there’d be an answer up there.</p><p>But there were still just the same two choices, and about one goddamn second to make up his mind.</p><p>Eddie took a deep breath.</p><p>He stepped out from behind the tree and into the path of Henry Bowers.</p><p>Henry was shocked enough to lower the bow, but he recovered quickly.</p><p>“And what do we have here?” he said, looking Eddie up and down.</p><p>Eddie flipped the knife in his hands. “A fellow survivor of the apocalypse,” he said. “You wouldn’t hurt a human, would you?”</p><p>Bowers nodded at Belch, and he was rushing forwards the next second. He barreled Eddie over like a rottweiler with a ragdoll. Eddie barely had enough time to loose his knife; his throw went wide and nicked Henry in the arm.</p><p>Henry just laughed as Eddie went down. Eddie tried to struggle, but Belch had about twenty pounds of muscle on him. He never had a chance. But he was cursing and shouting, for all the good it would do; he wasn't going down without a fight.</p><p>Belch let up on him, moving to kneel across his arms. Eddie tried to push up with his legs, but Victor sneered at him and readied his machete half an inch above his kneecaps.</p><p>Henry came to stand over him, his ridiculous mullet blocking out the sun. He huffed a satisfied laugh, then brought his boot down into Eddie’s stomach. “How’s that for an answer?” he asked while Belch muffled Eddie’s screaming with his hand. “You’re one twisted little fuck, you know that? You and your perverted friends have a new pet, we all saw it.” Eddie’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. He struggled to stay conscious through the swimming pain. “What do you do with it, huh?”</p><p>Eddie focused his gaze up at Henry and sunk his teeth into the palm covering his mouth. Belch yelped and ripped it away. Eddie spit the blood out, ignoring the millions of alarm bells ringing in his head, and grinned at Henry. “We braid each others’ hair and talk about horses.”</p><p>Victor made a sound like he was swallowing a laugh, but Henry looked more pissed off than ever; apparently he wasn’t used to his prey daring to talk back to him. He brought his boot down into Eddie’s chest again. This time, Eddie felt something snap. “Very funny, you little freak.” He crouched down so he was on eye level with Eddie and grabbed his chin forcefully. Eddie struggled to get out of his hold, but Belch pressed harder on his arms. “You don’t deserve that turbine, you hear me? You’re gonna run home and tell your little friends to walk quietly off your land when me and my boys come to collect.”</p><p>Eddie pitched sideways and threw up all over Henry’s shoes.</p><p>There was loud cursing and many expletives—<em>does he kiss his fucking mother with that mouth? </em>Eddie thought—but they were all very far away, and the world was too dark to care anymore.</p><p>It stayed dark for a long time. Eddie wasn’t sure if he was dreaming.</p><p>He heard yelling. He heard cursing and crying.</p><p>He felt arms wrap around him. They clung to him and wouldn’t let go. They were so warm and soft as they lifted him from the ground. And there was still yelling and cursing and crying, but Eddie let it fade away as he turned into the welcoming embrace.</p><p>Someone was whispering to him. The words sounded quiet and loud and quiet again, like someone messing with the volume knob on a record player, but the tone was the same.</p><p>
  <em>You’re gonna be okay, Eddie. You’re alright. It’s alright. You’re gonna be okay.</em>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie sampled the waking world a few times before he was ready to commit. Sometimes there was someone sitting by his bed—Mike, then Stan, then Ben—and sometimes they’d offer him some water and some delightful treasures from Eddie’s painkiller stash. Sometimes it was night time, and he’d open his eyes to see pitch black and he’d start struggling to suck in air.</p><p>This time, it was day. And there was no one by his bed.</p><p>He frowned and pushed himself upright frantically. His ribs screamed in pain, and his vision swam. But there were more painkillers next to him, and a glass of water for him to drain and keep down. He was shakily returning the glass to his bedside table when he finally started paying attention to the noises floating in from outside.</p><p>Shouting.</p><p>Eddie’s adrenal glands went into overdrive. He was stumbling downstairs in a pain-fog before he thought to check if he was even wearing pants. He glanced down to see his favorite pair of shorts on his legs.</p><p>The shouting outside stopped, and a rhythmic <em>thunk thunk thunk </em>started in its place.</p><p>Eddie rushed to push the front door open.</p><p>Everyone was gathered outside. They were watching Beverly.</p><p>She was kicking down the fence post—the one Richie’s chain was attached to. Her studded leather boot collided with the wood once, twice, three times.</p><p>With a final groan of effort, she knocked the fence post out of the ground.</p><p>Richie watched it fall, petrified.</p><p>“Bev–” Bill started.</p><p>Bev wheeled on him. “Don’t <em>Bev </em>me, Bill. You know I’m right. He–” she pointed at Richie, and he shrunk back, “–just saved Eddie’s life. We can’t keep lying to ourselves and—and keep him chained up like a fucking dog. It's been long enough! He's earned our trust ten fucking times over. He can think and talk and feel, just like us. Tell me I'm wrong."</p><p>Richie started to grin.</p><p>“Bev, you’re right,” Ben tried, holding out his hands. “We’re not saying you’re not; we all know you are. But Eddie’s not gonna like this.”</p><p>The grin froze on Richie’s face.</p><p>Eddie stumbled down the porch steps. “Actually,” he called, and everyone’s heads snapped towards him. “He is.”</p><p>Bev’s eyebrows jumped towards her fringe.</p><p>Richie whipped his head around to stare at him, and the next second he was running. The chain slipped from the end of the felled post and dragged along the ground after him.</p><p>Eddie clung to the railing of the porch steps as Richie stumbled to a halt before him.</p><p>“Eddie,” he panted, looking him up and down. “You’re awake. You’re okay.”</p><p>
  <em>You’re okay.</em>
</p><p>The words sounded achingly familiar. Eddie’s eyes widened as he remembered the arms that had carried him home, and the comforting voice in his ear.</p><p>It was Richie.</p><p>Eddie stumbled back a step, knees buckling.</p><p>Richie held his arms out towards him, expression alarmed. He moved closer, as if to catch Eddie if he fell.</p><p>"Don't fucking touch me." Eddie spat the words out in a tone he’d never heard himself use. He sounded possessed. He sounded hateful.</p><p>Richie reared backwards. Hurt and shame flashed across his face.</p><p>“I think you’d better back off, buddy,” Stan said, stepping past Richie to loop his arm around Eddie’s waist. “C’mon, Eddie. You shouldn’t be out of bed yet.”</p><p>Eddie stared at the ground and let Stan pull him back inside and up the stairs, but he refused to go back to bed.</p><p>He spent the next few hours in the bath, gently scrubbing every inch of himself clean while Stan sat on the toilet and read a book about moss.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie moaned around a mouthful of grilled vegetables, then shoveled some rice in his mouth, then another forkful of vegetables.</p><p>“Slow down there, bro,” Mike said, watching him with worry.</p><p>Eddie swallowed. “I forgot how good solid food tasted,” he said. “The liquid diet life is not for me.”</p><p>Beverly laughed from across the table as she placed down a card from her hand. “You’re the one who put yourself on that diet.”</p><p>Bill swore and threw his cards down. “I fold. Dammit, Bev.”</p><p>“That was for everyone’s benefit!” Eddie argued. “Those painkillers make me woozy, and when I’m woozy—”</p><p>“–you barf, yeah, we get it,” Bev rolled her eyes. “And what do you mean you ‘fold’, Bill? We’re not playing poker, you can’t fold.”</p><p>Bill pushed himself to a stand. “Fine, then I quit. You’re cheating, Beverly Marsh,” he accused, pointing at her then turning and huffing out of the room.</p><p>Bev shook her head and looked over at Mike. Her expression asked a teasing, <em>Him? You sure?</em></p><p>Mike laughed under his breath and started gathering up the cards. “Being a sore loser’s all part of the charm. Eddie? You in for a round?”</p><p>Eddie scraped the last of his meal into his mouth and munched while he thought about it.</p><p>“No thanks, Mikey.” Eddie wiped his lips and pushed his bowl away. “I think I’m gonna try to go for a walk.”</p><p>Bev jerked her head to look at him. “Are you sure, Eddie? Don’t push yourself too hard.”</p><p>Eddie stood shakily and walked over to the sink. The sun outside was setting, the world washed a soothing lilac-orange gradient. “I won’t go too far,” Eddie defended. “Just to the treeline and back.”</p><p>He placed his washed up bowl on the rack then turned to see Beverly and Mike staring at him disapprovingly.</p><p>“C’mon, guys,” Eddie said. “I’m going crazy cooped up in this house. And who’s more paranoid than me? I’ll be fine.”</p><p>Mike nodded, convinced, but Bev was still frowning. “Does this have anything to do with the supply run? Because there’s no way you’re gonna be healed up enough to go with us in two days time. We already decided you can’t come; it doesn’t matter how many times you walk to the stupid trees and back.”</p><p>Eddie slouched and Mike looked surprised. The tone of Bev’s voice was dark, almost angry, but Eddie recognised the protectiveness hiding underneath.</p><p>And he didn’t fucking appreciate it.</p><p>From the doorway, Stan piped up. “She’s got a point, Eddie.”</p><p>Eddie looked up; how long had he been standing there? And more importantly, why wasn’t he on Eddie’s side?</p><p>“First of all; it didn’t. Second of all; fuck you all very much.” With that, Eddie straightened his back and walked out of the kitchen. Stan leant out of his way as he passed, reaching out a hand to comfort him that Eddie ducked to avoid. His ribs were screaming at him with every step, but he didn’t let himself falter until he was out onto the porch.</p><p>He took a second out there to cling on to the bannister, close his eyes, and feel the wind on his skin. He took exactly five deep breaths, then opened his eyes. Richie was standing on the other side of the bannister and staring at him. Of course he was. Bertha was at his feet, soaking wet, and there was a puddle of mud all around them. Richie was holding a bucket in one hand, his calves streaked with dirt. He was looking at Eddie with concern, and then the concern melted into awkwardness.</p><p>Eddie’s cheeks burned. “What?” he snapped. “I’m supposed to breathe deeply so I don’t get pneumonia.”</p><p>It was the first thing Eddie had said to him since—well. Since the last time.</p><p>Richie blinked at him owlishly, and Eddie realized that his glasses weren’t on his face but pushed up into the tangle of his hair.</p><p>“That’s cool,” Richie said. He shifted on his feet, then hoisted up the bucket in his hands. “I’m giving Bertha a bath.”</p><p>Bertha bleated as if in confirmation that she was, in fact, being bathed. She took advantage of Richie’s distraction to lean down and nibble at his toenail.</p><p>He laughed hysterically and jumped backwards. “No, B. I told you not to embarrass me.”</p><p>She bleated again, louder this time.</p><p>Richie pointed at her sternly, and some of the water sloshed out of the bucket in his other hand. “How dare you talk to your mother like that.”</p><p>Eddie snorted without expecting to, then his vision swam as a wave of pain crashed over him. He cleared his throat, eyes watering. “Well, I’m going for a walk, so…” he said, biting the inside of his cheek as he carefully lowered himself down the stairs. “Have fun with that.”</p><p>Richie nodded, then seemed to realize what Eddie said.</p><p>“Wait, a walk? Dude, your ribs are still broken, are you sure?” He dropped the bucket and stepped forwards, then faltered and took two steps back. “Sorry, sorry, I won’t—I wasn’t going to–”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Eddie cut him off. “They're just fractured, not broken. You don’t have to have to walk on eggshells around me, I’m not made of glass.”</p><p>Richie ducked his head. “No, I. I know, I was just…” He looked up for a second, then away again.</p><p>Bertha stepped on his foot as she walked away, her bathtime having been prematurely terminated. Richie winced.</p><p><em>It’s just that you told me not to fucking touch you. </em>Richie didn’t say it—and, hell, maybe he wasn’t even thinking it—but it was all Eddie could hear.</p><p>He opened his mouth to apologise, maybe to explain, then he closed it again.</p><p>“Yeah.” He sighed and took another deep breath. “Well.”</p><p>Richie scratched his arm, leaving a streak of mud across the skin. “Yeah.”</p><p>Eddie turned and started walking.</p><p>Richie didn’t follow.</p><p>Eddie didn’t spend too long at the treeline. He stood there for only a few seconds before the creeping darkness cast the shadows into monsters, laughing faces, hands with sharp nails that kept moving and shifting, crawling towards him with malice.</p><p>Eddie knew he was seeing things, but then a twig snapped in the distance and he startled backwards. He walked as fast as he could make his aching body move, then left a candle burning all night.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“Hey.” Eddie leant against the wood of Stan's doorway. Stan looked up from where he was standing and packing his things into his bag at the foot of his bed.</p><p>“Hey,” Stan greeted, the edge of his lip curling into a smile. “You look like shit.”</p><p>Eddie shrugged. “Haven’t been sleeping well.”</p><p>Stan nodded and tucked a shirt into his bag. He reached for his rubik’s cube.</p><p>“Actually, uh–” Eddie said. “Can I have that?”</p><p>Stan looked at him and shrugged. “Sure.”</p><p>He tossed the cube at Eddie, who caught it easily. It was close to solved, with a few errant blocks out of place. Eddie spun the sides a few times until all the colors were mixed up together.</p><p>“Aw, man,” Stan joked. “I almost had it.”</p><p>Eddie laughed, then winced as the movement jostled his ribs.</p><p>Stan watched his face carefully as he asked, “How are you?”</p><p>Eddie prickled. “Fine. How are you?”</p><p>Stan sighed. He slumped down to sit on his bed, elbows coming to rest on his knees. He laughed tiredly, and Eddie noticed that the collar of his shirt was askew, and he was wearing mismatched socks. “To be honest, Eddie? I’m not great.”</p><p>Eddie frowned.</p><p>Stan looked away from him and out of the window. “You know I hate going out there.”</p><p>Eddie did know. It was the first thing he’d thought, when Bill brought up a supply run a week ago.</p><p>They all knew Eddie couldn’t go, and Bill was quick to volunteer to take his place. Eddie wanted to argue—they had enough supplies, they were fine—but that just wasn’t true. They’d barely found enough shelf-stable food on their last supply run to last them up until this point, and with the loss of the vegetable garden…</p><p>They didn’t have much choice.</p><p>Eddie let out a breath and moved to sit on Stan’s left. “You’re gonna be fine. You’re a fighter, Stanley.”</p><p>Stan nodded at his feet, then nudged Eddie’s shoulder with his own. “So are you.”</p><p>Eddie shook his head. “I don’t want to be.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Stan said. “Me, neither.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie found Richie in the back garden with Bill. They were sitting a few feet apart under the shade of the big oak tree, bent over two matching notebooks. Bill was alternating between talking and writing. His words were lost in the distance between them, but Eddie could still hear the supportive tone.</p><p>Richie was frowning down at his page and struggling to keep up. He was holding a pencil in his hands like it was a carving knife. His movements were jerky and imprecise as he tried to follow Bill’s cues.</p><p>Eddie took a seat, fiddling with the cube in his hands as he watched.</p><p>It only took a few minutes for Richie to get frustrated. He said something that Eddie couldn’t hear, eyes shining with dark humour—the kind of humour that was largely anger and very little joking—then dropped the pencil and shoved the book away.</p><p>Bill sighed and shook his head.</p><p>Richie caught his sleeve as he moved to stand, his features turning apologetic.</p><p>Bill nodded and smiled. Eddie knew him well enough to tell that he wasn’t offended, but Richie didn’t seem convinced as he watched Bill pick up his supplies and walk away.</p><p>“Couldn’t find the scarecrow’s brain, huh?” Eddie joked as Bill walked past him into the house.</p><p>Bill paused, then huffed. “You know what, Eddie? D-d-don’t talk about him like that.”</p><p>Eddie blinked. He could count on one hand the amount of times Bill had told him off.</p><p>Bill watched Eddie’s face, then sighed. He placed his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and said, “Sorry, but. He’s really trying, you know?”</p><p>Eddie looked over at Richie. He was staring intently at the book in his lap, tracing the letters with his finger.</p><p>“And whatever he is–” Bill stopped, then started again excitedly. “We’ve all ignored it, but. He’s special, right? He’s—he’s basically a <em>human </em>again. And if we can figure out why that happened–”</p><p>Eddie stood, cutting him off. “He’s not human, though. He’s just a freak—an, an outlier.”</p><p>Eddie shoved the cube into Bill’s hands and tried to push past him into the house.</p><p>Bill caught his arm gently. “Eddie…” he pleaded.</p><p>Eddie grit his teeth and turned. “What?”</p><p>Bill looked sympathetic but stern. “Promise me you’ll look out for him while we’re gone, okay?”</p><p>“Me? Look out for <em>him?” </em>Eddie scoffed, then froze. “Wait, you’re not... I thought he was coming with you?”</p><p>Bill shook his head. “I asked him to stay behind. If Bowers comes back while we’re gone, then it’s just gonna be Mike here to defend the house. You c-can’t fight, Eddie. I’m sorry, but you need him more than we do.”</p><p>“Yeah, but if they do come back?” Eddie hissed, stepping into Bill’s space. “They’ll fucking kill him.”</p><p>“I thought you didn’t care,” Bill challenged.</p><p>Eddie looked away. “I never said that.”</p><p>He took a step backwards, and Bill let his arm slip through his fingers. He sighed wearily, then seemed to notice the rubik’s cube in his hands.</p><p>“Wait, here–” he said, holding it out.</p><p>Eddie looked back from the doorway and shook his head. “It’s for him.”</p><p>He closed the door before Bill could react.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The hunting party left the next morning. Eddie watched them go from a chair on the front porch, holding a block of ice to his ribs through a tea towel. No one asked him about it as Bev, Ben, Stan and Bill made their way out of the house and down the path. He was glad; he didn’t want to lie, but. He wasn’t about to tell them about the panic attack he’d had in his sleep.</p><p>They’d probably heard it through the walls anyway; they weren’t exactly thick.</p><p>But no one mentioned it. It had been a quiet morning—</p><p>The quiet was only broken for Eddie by Bev pulling him into a gentle hug and whispering an apology in his ear on her way out the door.</p><p>“Take care of yourself out there,” Eddie replied, smoothing a hand down her back. “And try not to get lost without me.”</p><p>—and it was quiet still as his friends crunched gravel and grass under their boots, walking further and further away from the relative safety of their home.</p><p>“Don’t worry, guys,” Mike said, dropping down into the seat next to Eddie. Richie looked up from where he was sitting across the porch, back pressed to the bannister so he couldn’t see the four of them walking away. “They’re gonna be okay.”</p><p>Eddie couldn’t tell if he believed that or not, but he nodded anyway. It was always a roll of the dice, going out into what used to be the world. Sometimes you struck gold, and sometimes you got eaten.</p><p>So maybe not like a dice roll after all.</p><p>They sat in silence; Eddie and Mike watched their friends fade into tiny dots on the horizon, and Richie fiddled with a cube of rainbow plastic in his hands.</p><p>After a while, Mike said, “Wow, you’re really good at that thing.”</p><p>Eddie looked down and saw what Mike was looking at; Richie, staring down at the solved cube in his hands in puzzlement.</p><p>“Yeah,” he said, voice distant. “Or—I think I used to be.”</p><p>He started up again, messing the rows up in random twists, then staring at the jumble of colors intently. The cube went <em>snick, snick, snick, </em>and Richie paused to stare at it, and then he did it again and again.</p><p>Eddie started counting in his head. One minute and forty seconds later, and Richie held up a newly-solved cube with a mile-wide grin.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Mike started to laugh. “Dude, that rocks,” he said. “How’d you do that?” It wasn't an empty question, Eddie knew. Mike just liked to know things.</p><p>Richie seemed to notice the genuine curiosity on Mike's face. His grin faded. “I don’t know.”</p><p>“Oh, well. That’s okay, man. It’s still impressive, right, Eddie?” Mike nudged him in the shoulder.</p><p>Richie turned his big brown eyes in Eddie’s direction. For a second, it looked like he actually wanted Eddie’s approval, then he looked away.</p><p>“Yeah, Mike,” Eddie answered, then swallowed. “Hold on, I’m getting a call–” he lifted his hand to his face, pretending to take the call. He nodded and hummed; Mike looked perplexed, but Richie was struggling not to laugh. “Yeah, okay.” Eddie put his hand down and looked Richie dead in the eyes. “That was Mensa. They said they wanted to take you, but they can’t because you have brain damage.”</p><p>“Dude–” Mike said, holding his hands up.</p><p>But Richie burst out laughing. He laughed so loud that he dropped the cube, bent over wheezing and snorting like a car that wouldn’t start.</p><p>Eddie started to laugh too. “Ow, fuck,” he said, pressing the ice back to his ribs.</p><p>For some reason, that set Richie off again. Mike joined after a moment, laughing as he said, “I don’t get it.”</p><p>Richie sobered up, wiping tears from his eyes. “Well, Mikey boy,” he started. Eddie didn’t recognise the voice he was putting on, but it sounded nasal. “If you have to explain a joke, then it’s not very funny, eh?”</p><p>Mike shook his head sort of fondly, then stood. “I’m gonna get some breakfast. Eddie?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Eddie said, pushing to a stand. “I’m coming.”</p><p>“Well, I’ll be here,” said Richie, picking up the rubik’s cube and starting to fiddle again. His face was still shining with mirth as Eddie and Mike left him outside.</p><p>Eddie watched him through the kitchen window for a few moments while Mike rummaged around in the cupboard. He was still just sitting there, flicking the cube this way and that.</p><p>And this time, he got it in one minute ten.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The house was too quiet with just the two of them. Eddie wasn’t used to being left behind. He tried not to think about it as he settled down to sleep that night, but the silence echoed around and around and around in his mind.</p><p>Until it didn’t.</p><p>He was in the woods again—of course he was in the woods. He picked up a stick, and then the stick burned his hand. He dropped it and reared backwards with a shout, but there was someone behind him. They knocked him to the ground, laughing.</p><p>“You’re disgusting, you know that, right?” Henry Bowers said, still grinning. Eddie looked up at him, but he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. Bowers knelt over him, and he was the size of a tree. He pressed a hand to Eddie’s chest and it felt like a truck was crushing him. “What do you do with that gross little pet of yours, huh? You let him touch you? You’re sick.”</p><p>It was still Henry Bowers talking—his blood-stained lips were moving, and his shadow-stricken features were animating, but his voice sounded different. It sounded like... Eddie's mother.</p><p>And then he was gone, and something warm wrapped around Eddie. He relaxed as two arms snaked around his waist. Eddie turned, and Richie was there. They were standing at the bottom of an empty swimming pool, the sky above them bright with stars. Eddie tried to step back, but Richie wouldn’t let him go.</p><p>He was smiling, but he was squeezing too hard. Eddie couldn’t breathe. And then Richie was laughing, but it didn’t sound right. It sounded hollow.</p><p>Eddie struggled to get away, but he couldn’t move again. All he could do was watch as Richie’s skin started rotting. A piece of his cheek fell off, and his eyes started squirming as maggots tried to push their way out. But he was still laughing, and his hands were warm as he leaned close and pressed his lips to Eddie’s throat.</p><p>Eddie woke up not knowing whether to throw up or cry.</p><p>He sat up in a daze, feeling the sheets beneath him and the breeze through the window.</p><p>A few minutes later, he found himself outside the barn. He didn’t remember deciding to come, or getting dressed, or walking outside.</p><p>He pressed his hand to the cold wood, and the door swung open.</p><p>Richie stared at him, eyes unfocused. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his hair was messy from sleep.</p><p>Eddie didn’t say anything—he didn’t know how. He just slipped past him into the barn, letting Richie close the door behind.</p><p>Eddie looked around and caught sight of a bed in one of the stalls. <em>Bed </em>was being generous; really, it was a pile of hay covered in blankets and pillows. It looked interrupted, like Richie had been sleeping in it a second ago before stumbling awake to meet him.</p><p>Eddie walked towards it without thinking. In fact, he couldn’t think at all. His mind was at once spiralling a million miles an hour, and utterly still.</p><p>He sat down on the bed, ribs aching with the movement. He looked around at the sheets, then lay down on his back.</p><p>They were still warm.</p><p>He looked up and realized he could see the stars through a small hole in the roof. They blinked down at him, swimming and swirling as tears welled in Eddie’s eyes.</p><p>There was a noise of shifting fabric and rustling hay as Richie sat beside him. He crossed his legs, looking down at Eddie.</p><p>He opened his mouth to speak, but Eddie shook his head quickly.</p><p>Richie closed his mouth and looked up at the stars. For a few minutes, that was all there was.</p><p>Eddie was able to take a deep breath for the first time all night.</p><p>Then his hand started tingling. He frowned and turned his head. Richie was looking down too, but at his own hand. It was creeping ever so slowly across the blanket towards Eddie’s.</p><p>Eddie let it happen. Richie’s fingers crept closer and closer, and then their skin met. At first, it was just pinky to pinky, the tiniest sensation that Eddie could ignore if he wanted to. And then Richie’s fingers moved to rest on top of his completely. His palm was larger than Eddie’s, covering his hand in a sheet of warm, soft skin.</p><p>Eddie lay there for a breathless moment that stretched on forever, and then he fucking <em>bolted. </em></p><p> </p><p>He was in the bathroom for ten minutes scrubbing at his skin before he woke up to how ridiculous he was being.</p><p>“What the fuck am I doing?” he asked his red-eyed reflection.</p><p>The reflection stared back in judgement. Eddie stepped away from the sink.</p><p>“Wasting all our water?” guessed a voice from the doorway.</p><p>Mike was standing there, watching him with a steady expression.</p><p>Eddie didn’t think; he just wrapped his arms around Mike’s waist and buried his head in his neck.</p><p>Mike rubbed his back uncertainly. “Eddie…” he said, then he cleared his throat and his next words were firm; comforting. “You know I love you, right?”</p><p>Eddie nodded.</p><p>“And you can talk to me?”</p><p>Eddie pulled back and wiped at his eyes. “You can talk to me, too,” he said. It was a deflection, and they both knew it. Eddie felt a pang of shame. He would talk to Mike; honest, he would. If you only had the words in the first place.</p><p>Mike hesitated. “I know.”</p><p>Eddie tried to smile as he backed away. “Bathroom’s free if you wanna have a breakdown. It’s good for that.”</p><p>Mike’s lips twitched and he slipped inside.</p><p>Eddie listened for a moment, but the only sound he heard were the crickets outside.</p><p>So he went to sleep and prayed for no more dreams.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie didn’t know what he was expecting from Richie.</p><p>At the very least, it involved some acknowledgement—some awkwardness, maybe—but the next few days found him just the same as he always was; loud, annoying, and friendly.</p><p>He and Eddie were talked into helping Mike with the orange tree harvest (‘talked into’ with Mike Hanlon meant Mike had asked and they’d said <em>yes, of course</em>). Eddie was on basket duty, since he couldn’t stay on his feet for more than a half hour at a time.</p><p>Richie was using a handful of oranges to do a Charlie Chaplin-esque slapstick routine that had Mike in stitches and Eddie biting the inside of his cheek because it still hurt to laugh.</p><p>When Richie finished his improvised routine, he squatted in front of Eddie and moved to drop the oranges into the basket.</p><p>“Dude, no—I saw you put one of those under your armpit. Gross,” Eddie said, batting his hands away.</p><p>Richie wrinkled his nose and tried to navigate around Eddie’s arms, now crossed protectively over the basket. “C’mon, Eds. They’re fine,” he complained.</p><p>“And I’m the fucking Queen of England,” Eddie retorted.</p><p>Richie looked at him, eyes unfocused. “What’s England?”</p><p>Eddie’s grip relaxed. “Richie, are you serious?”</p><p>Richie’s glassy expression lasted for just another second, then he dunked the oranges into the basket and leapt to his feet, arms held aloft in glory.</p><p>“Aw, fuck, dude. Are you kidding me?” Eddie groused, rifling through the oranges in the basket desperately. It was no use; they all looked the same.</p><p>“And that, my friends, is what we call a <em>gambit,” </em>Richie announced.</p><p>Mike laughed from a few trees down.</p><p>“Screw you, Richie. I suck at chess.” Eddie crossed his arms, but his mock-anger faded when Richie started snorting with laughter.</p><p>The morning light caught his hair as dawn rose over Safehouse, casting the small orchard a brilliant gold. Richie was still grinning as he turned back to the tree. He lifted himself on to his tiptoes, and his shirt—a Beverly original, made from soft lavender fabric—rose with him, revealing a strip of skin between his stomach and his hips. Eddie stared at it until spots swam around his vision, like he was looking into the goddamn sun.</p><p>Eddie cursed himself and looked away, right into Mike’s curious gaze.</p><p>He looked between Eddie and Richie, and Eddie saw a flicker of understanding pass through his eyes.</p><p>
  <em>Shit.</em>
</p><p>But Mike just turned back to his work, unaware of Eddie’s inner turmoil.</p><p>“Hey, Eds! Catch!” Richie called, and Eddie raised his hands just in time to avoid getting smacked in the face with an orange.</p><p>“Don’t call me that,” Eddie snapped, letting the orange fall into the basket.</p><p>“No can do, Eds,” Richie answered cheekily. “I’m legally obligated–”</p><p>“Fuck!” Mike cursed, gaze fixed on something across the orchard.</p><p>Eddie’s heart leapt into his throat and he scrambled to a stand. Mike dropped the oranges in his hands and took off down the rows of trees, speeding towards the house.</p><p>Eddie’s hand fell to the knives in his belt, but then Mike yelled, “Bertha! NO!”</p><p>Eddie followed his path and caught sight of the troublemaking goat munching on Mike’s newly replanted veggie patch.</p><p>His hand went to his mouth to stifle a laugh. Mike was still yelling; he vaulted the fence and was on her in the next second, lifting her into the air as she struggled and bleated, mouth straining for another mouthful of artichoke seedling.</p><p>Richie sidled up next to him. He had a twig in his mouth that he puffed on like a cigarette, then he said, “That woman’s a wild thing, boy. She can’t be tamed.”</p><p>Eddie bit his lip. “I’m just glad it was only her. For a second there, I thought…”</p><p>Richie pulled the twig out of his mouth, frowning at him in concern. He was standing only a foot away, so Eddie could see every detail of his handsome—<em>not handsome, shut up—</em>face in the morning light.</p><p>“That it was Bowers?” Richie asked.</p><p>Eddie swallowed and nodded. “He said he’d be coming for us. As long as we’ve been here, he’s had it out for us, but.” Eddie placed a hand on his chest, careful not to disturb the bruises beneath his shirt. It was easier said than done; he was still lit up purple and red and brown and blue under there. “He’s getting bolder. We have something he wants, and he clearly doesn't care what it's going to take to get it.”</p><p>Richie’s eyes fixed on his hand. “That’s why Bill wanted me to stay back with you,” he said, realization coloring his voice.</p><p>“Duh,” Eddie huffed. “What’d you think?”</p><p>Richie shrugged. He fiddled with the twig in his hands. “Guess I just thought they didn’t want me to come.”</p><p>Eddie stared at him, startled by the vulnerability.</p><p>“Their loss, obviously,” Richie continued, all false bravado. “I’m a delight to be around.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Eddie agreed before he could stop himself.</p><p>Richie shot him a look; Eddie could read it clear as day. <em>You’re fucking with me.</em></p><p>Eddie let it go. He gestured instead to the wind turbine, the ever-spinning blades visible over the top of Safehouse. “Henry wants that turbine. Electricity is an impossible resource to come by, these days. At first, we offered to share it with him—juice up a generator that he could take back to his camp—but he kept coming back, demanding more and more until he was trying to talk us into just giving it to him. When he started to get threatening, Bill put his foot down.”</p><p>“<em>Come back with a warrant,” </em>Richie piped up, adopting a stern expression.</p><p>“Well, not exactly. Did you do anything except watch tv when you were a kid?” Eddie smiled despite his exasperated tone.</p><p>Richie dropped the act, taken aback. “Yeah, I—I think so,” he answered. “My dad was a dentist, and he’d give me my pocket money on a Friday for brushing my teeth all week, and I’d spend all weekend at the arcade beating all the high scores. This one time–”</p><p>“Dude, it was a rhetorical question. I don’t need your life story,” Eddie interrupted. He wasn’t thinking about how he sounded; he just needed Richie to stop talking. The image of him, younger and excited as he skipped into the arcade on a Saturday morning, pockets full of coins to spend, well. It made Eddie’s heart squeeze into a tight little ball, and it hurt like hell.</p><p>Richie looked stung. He cleared his throat and shuffled back a step. “Sure. Right.”</p><p>Eddie mentally slapped himself. He fumbled, trying to think of what to say. All he could think of was, “Sorry.”</p><p>“For what?” Richie laughed, and Eddie almost believed him. Then, Richie shrugged himself off and turned to face Eddie, not giving him time to answer. “You don’t have to worry about Bowers. I—I need to tell you something.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Richie looked over at Mike, who was rounding the side of Safehouse with Bertha still in his arms, scolding her in hushed tones.</p><p>“I bit him.”</p><p>Eddie wheeled on Richie, eyes wide. “You–”</p><p>“–bit him, yeah. When you told me to run that day, I came straight here. I saw Bev in the front yard, and I only stayed long enough to tell her what was happening, then I turned around and went back for you. I was too late—I’m–I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him hurting you.” The words were tumbling from Richie’s mouth like a waterfall, and Eddie did nothing but listen. “When I found you, I could smell blood. You were passed out on the ground, and he was standing over you with a smug look on his stupid bastard face, and I just. Saw red. I sunk my teeth into his arm, and he screamed. I… I know I shouldn’t tell you this, but. I <em>really </em>wanted to kill him, I wanted to just rip his spine out through his back and—” Richie cut himself off, staring down at his shaking hands. “But he bolted, and so did his friends. I picked you up to take you back, and when Beverly, Bill and Ben finally found us I wouldn’t let them take you.” Richie sagged, leaning back against the trunk of an orange tree behind him. He wouldn’t look at Eddie. “I haven’t apologised to you for that. I—uh. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you or not, but. I don’t want you to be worried. It’s been enough time now, he’s probably turned already. He’s not gonna remember how to scratch his balls, let alone who you are. Or what that is.” Richie finally looked up, but only towards the turbine.</p><p>“Rich…” Eddie said, at an utter loss for words.</p><p>Richie looked down at his hands again. They were still shaking like a tree in the wind. “I know you don’t want me to touch you,” he choked out. “I get it. I wouldn’t either, if I were you. So I’m sorry, for that day and for–” he paused, then continued haltingly, “–the. The other night. I just forget, sometimes, that I’m not–”</p><p>Eddie reached over to him slowly, with purpose, and steadied Richie’s hands with his own.</p><p>Richie’s eyes widened and he went completely still.</p><p>“Guess what, dude,” Eddie said, trying to sound calm over the roaring of his heartbeat. “I’ve also thought about ripping Henry’s spine out through his chest. You’re not special.”</p><p>For some reason, Eddie’s words caused tears to well in Richie’s eyes. They were magnified by the lenses of his glasses into a red-rimmed watery mess.</p><p>Richie’s hands twisted under Eddie’s until they were flipped. He gripped Eddie’s bony wrists with his long, warm fingers. He wasn’t shaking anymore.</p><p>When he spoke, Richie sounded like he was barely hanging on to his composure. “Yeah, but did you bite him? You’re a spitfire, but not so much with the teeth-first kinda attitude.”</p><p>“I’m a spitfire?” Eddie asked, delighted.</p><p>“Eddie, you’re the bravest person I know,” Richie answered. The statement hung between them for a moment, heavy and true. Then Richie recovered, and added, “But before you let that get to your head, I <em>do </em>only know, like. Six people. Seven, if you count Bertha.”</p><p>“Don’t count Bertha!” Called Mike.</p><p>Eddie turned to see him walking towards them up the row of oranges, wiping some sweat off his brow.</p><p>Surprisingly, it was Richie who snatched his hands away first, leaving Eddie to stumble back a step and tuck his now-sweaty palms behind his back as Mike continued talking, none the wiser.</p><p>“She’s in goat jail.”</p><p>Richie made an offended noise, already slipping back into his jovial persona. “Objection! On what charges?” he demanded.</p><p>Mike gave him a flat look. “Treason.”</p><p>Richie laughed, then Mike’s poker face broke and he laughed, too. Together they turned to the trees and went back to work picking oranges.</p><p>Eddie took his seat next to the basket and spent the next hour fighting the urge to go wash his hands.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“Hey, man,” Mike said when he walked into the kitchen the next morning.</p><p>Eddie was staring into a cup of tea, but he looked up and smiled weakly.</p><p>“You alright?” Mike frowned, pulling the second last jar of oats off the shelf. “Shit, we’re almost out of oats.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Eddie answered, swirling a spoon around in his mug. “Just. I’ve been having bad dreams.”</p><p>Mike nodded. The oats made a pitter-pattering sound as he poured them into a ceramic bowl. When the jar was empty, he sighed and placed it in the sink.</p><p>“These days, I only dream about one thing,” Mike said. He poured some water from the still-hot kettle into his bowl, then added some fresh orange segments while he talked. “When my parents got sick, they went feral. I did what I had to do to protect myself—they would have wanted that.” Mike turned to Eddie and leant back against the counter. He laughed humorlessly. “I used to dream about kid shit; flying and dinosaurs and giant food, y’know? Now all I got is me watching my family home burn down.”</p><p>Eddie blinked. “Shit,” he breathed. “Sorry.”</p><p>Mike pinned him with a look. “Me, too. About whatever it is that’s in your dreams.”</p><p>Eddie almost told him. He <em>wanted </em>to tell him. He didn’t think Mike would really get it, but he was a good listener and an even better friend.</p><p>Eddie opened his mouth before he’d made up his mind when a knock sounded. <em>Rat-tatta-rat-tat, </em>right against the wood of the front door. Eddie and Mike looked to it in panicked unison.</p><p>Then, Richie appeared in the kitchen window that faced the porch. He smiled and waved.</p><p>Mike sighed. “Gave me a damn heart attack!” he called as he walked towards the door.</p><p>When he pulled it open, Richie answered, “What, you got a broken ticker, old man?”</p><p>Mike just stared at him. “What do you want, Richie?”</p><p>“To invite you and Eddie Spaghetti over there to a movie night!” Richie answered, grinning a toothy grin.</p><p>“Eddie <em>what now?” </em>Eddie called.</p><p>Mike and Richie ignored him.</p><p>“A movie night?” Mike probed.</p><p>Richie nodded rapidly. “I remembered Indiana Jones this morning. What a flick. D’you catch that one, Edward?”</p><p>Eddie made a face at him.</p><p>“See! Eddie knows it.” Richie clapped and rubbed his hands together. “Right. I’m gonna need paper, pens, and scissors.”</p><p>Mike stepped away from the door and turned towards the living room. “I can get you a book, a pencil, and a knife,” he called over his shoulder.</p><p>Richie watched him go, still loitering in the doorway awkwardly.</p><p>Mike turned back and saw him standing there. “You can come inside,” he said, like it should be obvious. And in a way, it was; no one had told him he couldn't come inside, because he'd never asked.</p><p>Eddie watched Richie’s eyes pop out of his head. The first step he took into the house was excruciating; he looked like he was stepping in an active landmine.</p><p>The second step was easier, and by the third Richie was smiling so big Eddie’s cheeks hurt in sympathy.</p><p>“Richie,” Eddie said, trying to get his attention.</p><p>Richie looked up from his feet.</p><p>“You better not be tracking mud in here.”</p><p>Richie gave an elaborate salute. “Yes, sir! Clean as a whistle, sir!”</p><p>Eddie laughed and leaned back in his chair. There was a loud thump from the living room down the hall, followed by Mike sighing in disappointment. “Gimme a minute,” he called.</p><p>“No problem,” Richie answered. He looked back over at Eddie in the kitchen, then spent a few moments soaking in the room. His eyes flitted over the big wooden table, the pitchers of oil, the shelves stacked full of jars, the near-empty pantry visible through open doors, the small plants on the windowsill, and the pot of stew simmering on the stove.</p><p>“Hey. C’mere,” Eddie said, reaching for an orange from the bowl on the table.</p><p>Richie crossed over to him obediently. He sunk down into the chair beside Eddie, still in a daze.</p><p>Eddie made quick work of peeling the orange in his hands. The sharp smell of citrus filled the room the second he broke the skin. He made sure to peel it over his mostly-empty breakfast bowl, juice running down his fingers and gathering amongst the leftover oats.</p><p>When the skin was off, he pushed his thumb into the middle and separated the segments.</p><p>“Here,” he said, offering the first one to Richie.</p><p>Richie stared at him in confusion.</p><p>Eddie wanted to roll his eyes, but he didn’t. “It’s not poisonous, Richie. Just eat the damn orange.”</p><p>Richie reached for it slowly, like it was going to spring to life and start mocking him. His fingers were cold when he pulled it from Eddie’s grasp. He studied it for a moment, then sniffed it. He leaned back in disgust.</p><p>Eddie watched him closely as he closed his eyes, blocked his nose with his free hand, and shoved the segment in his mouth.</p><p>He chewed. He swallowed. He licked his lips.</p><p>His hand fell away and his eyes opened to meet Eddie’s.</p><p>“See?” Eddie said, offering him another piece.</p><p>“That was disgusting,” Richie answered. “I’m gonna hurl.”</p><p>But he took the damn orange.</p><p>Eddie grinned to himself and popped a piece into his own mouth. “Just don’t get any in my hair,” he shot back.</p><p>“Oh, sho the resht of you ish fine?” Richie asked, mouth full.</p><p>Before Eddie could answer, Mike appeared on the other side of the counter that separated the kitchen from the den. “I did my best,” he said, slapping down a dusty book with thick, glossy pages down on the counter, followed by a pencil and a pair of scissors.</p><p>Richie wiped his fingers off on his shorts and stood. “Thanks, dude. This is perfect,” he breathed, leaning over the counter. He tilted his head to the side as he stared at the words on the front cover of the book. “Ancient...Rome?”</p><p>Mike nodded. “It’s got pictures, too. If you wanna use those.”</p><p>Richie’s eyes lit up.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Richie was a natural-born performer. If the world hadn’t rotted up and fallen apart, Eddie would’ve said he belonged on a stage, spotlighted dead centre with crowds of adoring fans.</p><p>Instead, he was putting on a puppet show on the back porch of a farmhouse at the end of the world.</p><p>For someone who claimed to have only remembered its existence that morning, Richie’s rendition of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark—complete with Roman Centurions, Gauls, Emperors, castles and horses and cities, as the characters and scenery—was delightfully accurate. Eddie was on the edge of his seat the entire time; he couldn’t help but picture every scene like the first time he’s seen this movie in a half-empty theatre a month after everyone else, after promising his mother he was with his friends at the library.</p><p>She’d never have let him see it; or, if she had, she’d be tutting the entire time and trying to cover his eyes at all the violent parts. At the time, he resented her protectiveness (though he’d never dare tell her, of course). But these days, Eddie had so many memories that he wished could be replaced by his mother’s smothering hand.</p><p><em>Is it better to be fragile in a cage or free and broken, </em>Eddie wondered.</p><p>Then the bad guys opened the ark and Richie dramatically acted like his face was melting off, and Eddie was laughing too much to care.</p><p>The rest of the reenactment passed quickly, and soon enough Mike was clapping as Richie hopped up onto the porch with his hands full of puppets.</p><p>“Thank you, thank you,” he said, taking a bow. “This has been a Tozier Productions film starring me as Director, Producer, and every other role.”</p><p>“Bravo!” Mike grinned, still clapping.</p><p>“Tozier?” Eddie asked, bewildered.</p><p>Richie paused, about to take another bow. “That’s my last name.”</p><p>Eddie’s throat dried up. “You have a last name,” he croaked.</p><p>For some reason, there were certain things that Eddie Kaspbrak kept as truths; they were towers in his mind, and though he rarely looked directly at them, they loomed over everything he did. Some of them were strong, with millions of stones packed together so tight a blade of grass couldn’t get through. Others—one in particular, in fact—were flimsily constructed, piles of bricks scattered around their bases from each time that truth had been almost knocked down.</p><p>And as Richie Tozier smiled a confused smile and said, “Yeah, of course. Everyone has a last name.”</p><p>—A tower fell.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When bad things happen, there’s not always a warning.</p><p>Mike Hanlon knew that. He knew that one minute you were just a kid sitting in church, the next minute your father was taking a chunk out of Joe from down the road while everyone screamed and held him back. But no one alerted the authorities; they just locked him in the basement, and your mother told you <em>he’s just sick, baby. He’ll get better, </em>but you can hear her crying all night.</p><p>Richie Tozier knew that, too. He knew that one minute you were making fart jokes and acing your classes and getting beat up by juniors for reasons you couldn’t understand, and the next minute all the schools were closed and your parents were boarding up the windows. <em>You can’t go outside for a while, Richie. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe here. Why don’t you do one of your impressions? Your father loves those. </em>But you had to run out of food eventually, and they were waiting for you outside, and your parents weren’t fast enough but you managed to get away with just a bite to show for it, and for a long time you didn’t know enough to realize that you had it worse.</p><p>Eddie Kasprak knew it, too. He was about to know it again.</p><p>He was standing in Beverly’s room, playing his favorite records. They were bumped and scratched, but every skip just made him smile. Then the smile faded.</p><p>He could see Richie in the backyard, sitting under a tree and scribbling away in that journal Bill gave him. He would stop occasionally to stretch out his hand and stare off into the distance.</p><p>The Tears for Fears record jumped again, and Eddie startled. He’d forgotten where he was for a moment, mind caught up in the clouds.</p><p>He laughed at himself and moved to switch the turntable off. Then he heard a noise coming from outside the house.</p><p>It sounded like a distressed bleat; like a soft, scared foghorn.</p><p>Richie was on his feet in an instant, and Eddie watched him take off for just a second before following suit. He’d only made it halfway down the stairs when Mike called out to him.</p><p>“Eddie!”</p><p>Eddie rushed the rest of the way down, ribs aching as he pushed himself harder and faster. He burst out onto the front porch, eyes scanning for danger.</p><p>His blood went cold.</p><p>There were ten walkers standing not sixty feet from the front gates. They were bound together by thick twists of rope, clawing at each other as they tried to break free.</p><p>Henry Fucking Bowers was standing off to the side, one of the rope ends clutched in his hand. Victor was on the other side, grinning like a maniac.</p><p>Henry was wearing his usual stained red tank, and Eddie caught sight of a bite mark where his right shoulder met his arm.</p><p>Eddie struggled to do the maths—it had been long enough for the bite to take, so how was Henry still alive, and still talking?</p><p>Richie was running into the barn with a screaming Bertha in his arms, leaving Mike to take a stand at the gates. His back was tense, but his hands were crossed.</p><p>“Mike,” Eddie said, then louder, “Mike!”</p><p>Mike backed away from the gate, careful not to take his eyes off Bowers or the horde.</p><p>Eddie rushed to meet him halfway. “What are you doing? Go get the fucking flamethrower—” Eddie hissed.</p><p>Mike shook his head. “He’s waiting for something,” he said lowly.</p><p>“I told you I’d be coming to collect,” Henry called. “You can either bare your necks like the little bitches you are, or…” he licked his lips, head tilted. “We can do this the hard way.”</p><p>“Hey, screw you!” Eddie called. “The only little bitch I see is <em>you, </em>motherfucker.”</p><p>Mike swore beside him. “Eddie, don’t—” he whispered, but it was too late.</p><p>Henry dropped the rope and the walkers rushed forwards. Some stumbled in their confusion while others turned on each other, but Eddie knew they only had seconds to act before the horde was upon them.</p><p>Mike took off in a sprint towards the porch. He ducked underneath it with an agility that Eddie had never seen from him, coming back up with a duffel bag in one hand and a flamethrower in the other.</p><p>He tossed the bag towards Eddie on his way back towards the gates. Wasting no time, Mike slung the fuel tank over his shoulder and pulled down on the trigger. A jet of flame roared out through the open gates, and the walkers that had managed to make it that far dropped to the ground, scattering away from certain death.</p><p>“Jesus fuck!” Richie called, staggering back against the now-closed barn doors.</p><p>There was a crash from the back of the house, then a loud thump—a rock thrown through a window.</p><p>“Eddie! I need some cover, man!” Mike called. He twisted this way and that, trying to aim at the walkers closest to the fence, but getting all of them at once was a losing battle.</p><p>“I’m on it!” Eddie answered. He slung the duffel over his shoulder and scrambled up the wind turbine’s ladder, pointedly ignoring his aching ribs.</p><p>When he reached the top, he saw that a few of the walkers had made it over the barbed wire and passed the fence. Richie ran at full speed towards the closest one to him—a young woman in a tattered pair of overalls—and shoved her back over.</p><p>Eddie unzipped the duffel and pulled out the crossbow inside as the walker bared her teeth at Richie in a ferocious growl. Richie growled back, and she cowered from him.</p><p>“Richie!” Eddie shouted.</p><p>Richie’s eyes shot towards him instantly. Eddie pointed at the back of the house, then loosed a crossbow bolt at a walker making a run for Mike’s unprotected side. It thunked right into their thigh, and they dropped to the ground.</p><p>Richie looked around the chaos of the front yard. Victor was still standing there, laughing at the violent scene before him, but Richie and Eddie were alarmed to see that Henry was nowhere to be found.</p><p>“Go!” Eddie shouted to Richie, with more urgency this time.</p><p>Richie went.</p><p>Eddie lost another three crossbow bolts before Mike’s flame started to fizzle out. Eddie cursed; he couldn’t remember if they’d left it with a full tank, and neither of them could afford the time it would take to refuel it. The walkers were still trying desperately to get close to him, tearing themselves up on the wire, and Eddie was scaring off the ones that made it past the fence, but it wouldn’t be enough. Especially since he wasn’t aiming to kill.</p><p>Eddie reloaded his crossbow with shaky fingers, struggling to breathe.</p><p>Richie was out back, fighting god knew what. Mike was standing right in the centre of the damn battlefield; one wrong move, one walker that got too close, and he was a dead man.</p><p>And Eddie had a fucking fractured rib. He felt useless, and a moment of despair rushed over him.</p><p><em>I’m gonna die like this, </em>he thought, sliding the new bolt into the mechanism.<em> Mike’s zombie chow, and Bill’s gonna kill me, but it’ll be too damn late because I’ll already be dead, too, and I’m gonna fucking die without—</em></p><p>“Ow,” Eddie hissed, looking down at his fingers. In his distraction, he’d caught his thumb on the sharp tip of the crossbow bolt. A droplet of blood formed and dripped down his skin, as if in slow motion.</p><p>Eddie had an epiphany.</p><p>Of all the differences between Richie and the rabid walkers that were attacking Safehouse with a mindless fury, there was one that he’d failed to consider. One that made so much sense in hindsight that Eddie wondered why he’d never thought of it like that before.</p><p>When a walker went rabid, they weren’t trying to be a murderer. They weren’t doing it for pleasure or for sport. They were just <em>hungry.</em></p><p>Eddie’s fingers were steady when he took aim. His mind cleared, and he pulled the trigger.</p><p>Across the yard, past the gates and the horde of zombies, Victor staggered back, a crossbow bolt sticking out of the flesh of his stomach.</p><p>The walkers froze, distracted by the smell of fresh blood—<em>warm, easy prey—</em>and in an instant the tide turned. Victor screamed as ten walkers descended upon him, teeth sinking into his flesh before he had a chance to fight back. They had him pinned, skin and muscle rent from bone as they feasted.</p><p>Eddie closed his eyes and tried not to throw up.</p><p>The roar of the flamethrower sputtered out, and Mike let it drop to the ground.</p><p>“Jesus christ,” he said.</p><p>Eddie opened his eyes to see him standing there and shaking, unable to look away from the carnage.</p><p>Eddie stumbled down the ladder, crashing to the ground as his sweaty hands slipped on the last few rungs.</p><p>Mike snapped out of it and rushed to his side. He steadied Eddie and slung his hand over his shoulder.</p><p>“Are you okay?” he asked, still staring at where Victor’s body was being hurriedly consumed.</p><p>“Yeah, I’m—Fuck. Richie,” Eddie said. He tugged urgently at Mike’s hold, trying to untangle himself. “We have to go help him, he’s–”</p><p>From the back yard, Richie screamed.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>There were two dead bodies in Mike’s vegetable patch.</p><p>One had a fence post through his chest—that was Belch, skewered on a wooden stake, an expression of malice frozen on his face.</p><p>The other had his neck ripped out. He took his last breath while Eddie and Mike stood there, stunned.</p><p>Henry Bowers’ blood was still pulsing out of the open wound, seeping into the dirt and staining the cabbage seedlings. His death was uglier than Victors; slower. More painful. His eyes were open, staring right up at his killer.</p><p>Richie was standing over him, eyes glassy behind his glasses. He was shaking, covered in blood; his shirt was hanging off him in pieces, a dripping wound on his chest that almost looked like letters had been carved into his skin. There was a knife sticking out of his thigh.</p><p>Eddie gagged and staggered back against Mike.</p><p>“Jesus,” Mike whispered.</p><p>Richie whipped around to them, face twisted in a feral snarl. When he caught sight of them, the expression melted away. He let out a pained sob, hands coming up to cover his face.</p><p>Eddie rushed forwards as Richie’s knees gave out. He caught him before he could drop, ribs twinging in protest.</p><p>“Shit,” he hissed, adjusting his grip. “Mike, can you–”</p><p>He needn’t have finished his sentence; Mike was by his side in an instant, slinging Richie’s other arm over his shoulder. Neither or them seemed to care about the blood.</p><p>“We gotta get him inside. That knife wound looks really bad. He could lose too much blood, or, or—fuck,” Eddie said, words tumbling out in panic. “We should bring him to my room, I’ve got all my stuff there. He’ll need—shit, um. Disinfectant and bandages, at least. Probably stitches.”</p><p>Mike didn’t say a word as they hoisted Richie up the stairs, and Richie didn’t seem capable of speaking even if he wanted to. He was still crying; awful, silent tears that cut lines through the smears of dirt and blood on his cheeks.</p><p>They laid him out on Eddie’s bed gingerly. His head met the white of Eddie’s pillowcase, wild dark curls spreading into a halo around his crying face. Mike let go of him and stepped away, but Eddie stayed by his side. His shaking fingers made quick work of removing the scraps of Richie’s shirt, and he could finally see what Bowers had been trying to write in Richie’s chest.</p><p>Trying was the operative word; he’d only made it two and a half letters in. Eddie bit back a hysterical laugh when he saw them—not because any of this was funny, but just because it was so absurd that <em>this </em>was what Henry chose to punish Richie for. <em>This, </em>out of everything that he was, and everything that the world had become.</p><p>How small it seemed. How utterly unimportant. And yet, there it was:</p><p><em>F A – </em>in bleeding letters on Richie Tozier’s sternum, and the start of a curve for a <em>G.</em></p><p>Mike saw it, too. But he said nothing.</p><p>What could he say?</p><p>Eddie stood. “I need some water and a few other things,” he said to Mike. “Are you–?”</p><p>Mike swallowed and motioned towards the back garden. “I’m gonna take care of the bodies. It’s a matter of minutes before those walkers out front sniff them out, and I don’t want them coming into our home to get to them.”</p><p>Eddie understood what Mike was going to do. He smiled humorlessly. “Waste not, want not, huh?”</p><p>Mike nodded, then a shadow of something passed over his face. “Richie?”</p><p>Richie’s eyes met his. His tears were beginning to slow as the shock and adrenaline was replaced by pain.</p><p>“Do you want me to put Bowers in the freezer for you?” asked Mike.</p><p>Richie pitched onto his side and vomited into Eddie’s trash can.</p><p>“Take that as a no,” Mike muttered.</p><p>He left, and Eddie followed him out then returned a minute later. He had a bowl of warm water in his hands and a stack of bandages under his arm. He opened his mouth to offer some words of comfort, but Richie was out like a light.</p><p>Eddie washed out his bin, then set to work cleaning his wounds.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Richie woke up while Eddie was wrapping a bandage around his thigh. It was a fucking awful time for Richie to decide to rise from unconsciousness, as Eddie was perched over his left leg and was holding his right leg in his arms, lifted in the air while he was securing the end of the bandage. Not to mention that Eddie was still green at the gills from having to administer stitches—something he’d only had to do twice before.</p><p>Richie blinked up at the ceiling, then grinned lazily at Eddie. Eddie’s cheeks burned. The churning in his stomach kicked up a notch.</p><p>“Fancy meeting you here, Eddie-shaped blob,” he drawled deliriously. Eddie shot a glance to his glasses; they were sitting on the bedside table, now clean of Bowers’ blood.</p><p>“Yeah, I bet you’re real surprised.” Eddie dropped his leg and Richie hissed sharply. The pain seemed to shock him into awareness and his face started to change. Eddie watched it happen as if in slow motion: a tightening of his lips, a watering of his eyes, his complexion paling.</p><p>“Shit,” Richie said. It was a mournfully pronounced word, trapped under the memory of what had happened earlier that day.</p><p>For a moment, there was silence. Richie closed his eyes.</p><p>Eddie shifted on his knees, preparing to stand. Richie snapped to look at him, and it seemed to hit him how close their bodies were. Then Richie caught sight of the stains on Eddie’s shirt. The <em>bloodstains.</em></p><p>Richie scrambled backwards and away from him. His neck hit the backboard in his haste. Blood seeped through the bandages around his chest, which was rising and falling in panicked gasps.</p><p>“Eds, you—<em>fuck—</em>I got so much blood on you, you’re gonna get sick–” he rushed out.</p><p>Eddie reacted without thinking; he parked himself down on Richie’s non-injured leg and grabbed his shoulders to stop him from reopening his damn wounds some more. Richie’s entire body froze the instant Eddie’s hands met his skin. In fact, Eddie wasn’t sure he was even still breathing. He just looked up at Eddie with blurred intensity, not quite managing to find his eyes.</p><p>“Richie, you need to calm the fuck down, okay? Breathe.”</p><p>Richie took a breath.</p><p>Eddie eased off him slowly, testing. When Richie didn’t try to move again, he grabbed his glasses and slid them onto his face.</p><p>It was like a magic trick, watching his eyes change size beneath the thick lenses. Richie blinked a few times in quick succession.</p><p>Eddie wasn’t done admonishing him. “You’re gonna pop a stitch if you squirm around like that. Jesus, Richie. I spent ages on those, have some damn respect.”</p><p>Richie laughed weakly, then his gaze went right back to the blood on Eddie’s shirt.</p><p>God. He really should've changed already, but that knife wound went right to the bone and Richie might not have been a normal human boy anymore but he still needed his blood <em>inside </em>his body.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry. But…” Richie raised his hand and pressed it against a red-brown stain on Eddie’s salmon polo. His hand came back clean and dry.</p><p>“I’m not worried about that,” Eddie lied. “Besides, only some of it’s yours.”</p><p>Richie looked up at him in awe. “You saved my life.”</p><p>Eddie shifted, uneasy. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well. Now we’re even.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Eddie slept in Stan’s bed that night. He scrubbed himself clean for hours first, listening to the drip of the water into the bath and the sounds coming in from outside. Mike had boarded up the broken window, then graduated to fixing the fencing around his vegetable garden. Again.</p><p>He was swearing up a storm; Eddie almost ran outside to check on him when he heard the first shout—naked though he might have been—but the “God fucking damn it!” sounded more like a man on his last thread of patience than a man fighting for his life. And Eddie knew Mike well enough to know that he didn’t want company when he was angry.</p><p>He seemed to get it all out of his system by midnight, long after Eddie had finished bathing. Eddie watched the furniture in Stan’s room shift into a blanket of darkness when Mike extinguished the lamplight he was working by.</p><p>All of a sudden, Eddie was alone in the dark.</p><p>And down the hall, Richie was sleeping in a real bed for the first time in god-knew how long.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Richie spent the next day being somewhat of a little bitch. He refused to swallow the pain meds Eddie brought him, and normally a simple refusal wouldn’t have been good enough to stop Eddie Kaspbrak when he put his mind to something, but. There was something about the pain he was in—or maybe it was that he was trapped, injured and unable to move on his own, or maybe it was the violent murders he’d committed the previous day—that pulled the feral side of him to the surface.</p><p><em>Hell, </em>Eddie thought, <em>it’s probably all three.</em></p><p>When Richie snarled at him and his offering of painkillers, Eddie didn’t flinch. He just snapped back.</p><p>It was the look of sudden shame on Richie’s face and his stumbled apologies that made Eddie drop it, in the end.</p><p>He was quiet the day after that; he didn’t make a peep when Eddie and Mike carried him to the bathroom, or when Eddie changed his bandages. He even ate the stew Mike brought him without complaint. Eddie watched him skewer a bean on his fork, sniff it, make a face, then eat it anyway.</p><p>A feeling not unlike pride swelled up in his chest.</p><p>And a similar feeling was day on Richie’s face, too, when Eddie dragged in the record player from Beverly’s room that night.</p><p>“Tears for Fears, Sound of Music soundtrack, Bat Out Of Hell…” Eddie narrated, flipping through the crate of records.</p><p>“Is it just me, or is this a strange collection?” Richie asked. He was sitting up in bed, fiddling with Stan’s rubik's cube—solving and unsolving in a loop that seemed to calm him. The tone of his question was curious, like he genuinely couldn’t tell. “Also, I want you to choose. Give it up for everyone’s favorite pint sized music maestro, D-D-DJ Kaspbrak!” He made some sound effects to go with the introduction.</p><p>Eddie narrowed his eyes. “Why, so you can criticise my taste?”</p><p>Richie just laughed.</p><p>Eddie didn’t have to think very hard on what to pick; a few moments later, the needle was going <em>fuzz-scratch-fuzz, </em>and then a soft woodwind melody was floating through the room.</p><p>Richie stilled at the first lyric, like he was channeling all his energy into listening.</p><p>“What is this?”</p><p>Eddie rose from his crouch and fiddled with the volume knob. “The Carpenters. My mom used to love them.” </p><p>The faraway look on Richie’s face didn’t fade. Eddie lasted as long as he could before, “What are you thinking about?” burst out of his mouth.</p><p>Richie stirred. He looked at Eddie, pasting on a smile. “Who, me? Why, mister, I never think anything at all,” he replied, fake with cheer. Then he broke into song—garbled lyrics from <em>If I Only Had A Brain</em> in a scarily accurate impression of the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.</p><p>Eddie laughed before he could stop himself.</p><p>“Yeah, you’re head’s empty, alright,” said Eddie, though he knew the opposite was true. “Now stop trying to sing over the record. I didn’t drag that thing in here for nothing.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>It was strange to have Richie in the house. Strange not because Eddie didn’t think he belonged there, but strange because every minute Eddie spent watching him, joking with him, sharing meals, keeping him company in his own bedroom, was a minute that could have been spent weeks ago if he hadn’t been so blind.</p><p><em>Realizing someone's important to you just makes you regret how much time you wasted thinking they weren’t,</em> thought Eddie.</p><p>But old habits died hard; Eddie still watched Richie like a hawk, cataloguing his every expression and movement and mood. He didn’t know what he was looking for—it’s not like he thought Richie would hurt him, or anything.</p><p>But he still watched.</p><p>And whenever he found himself alone, Eddie watched himself, too. He checked his eyes and gums and skin every night and every morning, looking for lesions or tears or bite marks. He even sat down with a chunk of deer thigh while he was supposed to be making lunch and just stared at it. He tried to eat it and gagged.</p><p>No matter how many times he failed those little tests, he couldn’t stop himself from checking.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>A few days later found Eddie and Mike in the spare room at the end of the second story hall. It had been used as a dumping ground of sorts, and though they’d been at it for several hours already, they still weren't finished sorting through it all.</p><p>Eddie picked up a broken lamp, debated the likelihood of finding a working light bulb anytime soon, then placed it in the ‘useless’ pile. It would just end up gathering dust in the attic like everything else in that pile, but there wasn’t exactly a dump nearby.</p><p><em>Well,</em> Eddie supposed, <em>the entire world could be classed as a dump, now. Who's to say we can't throw things wherever we want to</em>.</p><p>Eddie stared at the lamp for a long minute, trying to puzzle through the complex emotions that thought provoked.</p><p><em>I am, </em>he decided eventually. <em>I’m to say that.</em></p><p>Mike worked silently beside him. He was equally happy to listen to Eddie prattle on about whatever went through his head as he was to leave him alone with his thoughts.</p><p>In fact, they’d almost finished cleaning the room before he spoke up.</p><p>“Hey, Eddie?”</p><p>Eddie made sure to give Mike enough indication that he was listening without seeming too eager. He’d made that mistake before. Mike was like a cat; sometimes, you had to let him come to you.</p><p>“Are you worried about the others?”</p><p>Eddie hummed. He held a moth-eaten pillowcase up to the light. “They’re not due back for a couple of days,” he offered.</p><p>Mike snorted. “That’s not an answer, man. And that pillowcase is done for; throw it in the Bev pile.”</p><p>Eddie nodded, folding it neatly as he spoke. “Well, yeah, I guess. I keep thinking about what they’re doing, if they’re okay. If they’re getting lost without my navigational skills, going round in circles for days.” Mike smiled, and Eddie continued, “It sucks being left behind. I don’t know how you do it.” Eddie placed the pillowcase atop a stack of miscellaneous fabric, smoothing out a wrinkle.</p><p>Mike shrugged, lips pinched. “Normally Bill’s here to keep me company.” He sounded distant, almost somber.</p><p>Eddie paused. “Hey, um. Can I ask you a question?” </p><p>If Mike was surprised by the change of topic, he didn’t show it. “Sure.”</p><p>“Do you ever think… Maybe there’s people out there, stuck in a mindless hunger, who we could… Who we could help? Like Richie?”</p><p>Mike sent him a knowing look. “Yeah, I do. And Bill thinks so, too. Last I heard, you were the only one who didn’t.”</p><p>Eddie thought about that for a moment. “How, uhh. Shit, man. This is gonna sound kinda invasive—you don't have to answer, or anything.”</p><p>Mike laughed. He stopped what he was doing, leaning against the wall and giving Eddie his full attention. “Just spit it out, Eddie.”</p><p>Eddie parked his hands on his hips, trying to turn his uncertainty alchemy-like into confidence. “How did you know you liked Bill? Like, liked him <em>like that?” </em></p><p>Mike went quiet for a moment. Eddie couldn’t see what his face was doing because he was staring resolutely at the ground, cheeks aflame. His alchemy had failed.</p><p>“Eddie,” Mike sighed.</p><p>Eddie looked up, anticipating an expression of disappointment.</p><p>He was met with understanding instead.</p><p>“It’s not about knowing. It’s a feeling. You either feel it or you don’t, man.”</p><p>Eddie grit his teeth, trying not to sound ungrateful. “But how can you <em>tell</em> what you’re feeling? How–”</p><p>Mike waved him off. “You’re overthinking it. The way I figure, the rules about what we could and couldn’t do died with everyone else. It’s just us cockroaches left now, and–” Mike grinned fiercely, “–we get to do what we want, when we’re not busy just surviving."</p><p>“Easy for you to say,” Eddie shot back. “All you want is to grow vegetables and love your friends and read a book and kiss a boy. <em>I </em>want to—” he cut himself off, shrinking back.</p><p><em>Shit, I’ve gone too far, I’ve said too much, </em>screamed his mind.</p><p>But Mike didn’t look anything but patient. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than the things we’ve already done,” he said, low and sure. “Eddie, I saw you kill someone three days ago. He might not have been a good person, but he was still a kid, like us. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, I just want you to think about why you’re so worried about...whatever it is that you want, when that hasn’t even put a dent in you.”</p><p>Eddie was speechless, neck-deep in shame.</p><p>Mike sighed and pushed himself off the wall, headed for the door. “I’m sorry if you didn’t want to hear that. I'm going to get dinner started. Come find me if you want to talk about this some more, okay?”</p><p>Eddie nodded. He didn’t trust himself to say anything else.</p><p>“And, Eddie?”</p><p>Eddie looked up to see Mike poking his head around the doorframe.</p><p>“Thanks for making me sound like a grandma.”</p><p>Eddie choked out a laugh.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“Maybe if we just…leave it boarded up?” Mike suggested.</p><p>He and Eddie were standing at the back of the living room, warm mugs of tea in their hands and they tried to start their day with some practical problem solving. A gust of wind blew past, and a piece of shattered glass from the broken window before them fell to the ground with a mocking <em>clang.</em></p><p>Eddie gave him a look. “Yeah, so that cold air can waft in during winter, lowering our immune systems, so we all get pneumonia, and we die because we couldn’t be bothered to fix a damn window,” he answered, waving his hands.</p><p>Mike sighed wearily.</p><p>“Sorry, uh—we can board it up,” Eddie said, trying to backtrack. “It’s not <em>that </em>bad of an idea.”</p><p>“Nah, man, you’re right,” said Mike. “I just don’t know–”</p><p>The stairs creaked.</p><p>Someone swore under their breath.</p><p>Eddie looked at Mike, who looked back at him.</p><p>“Richie?” Eddie called, storming towards the staircase. “Is that you?”</p><p>He rounded the corner and came face to face with a bashful former-zombie. Part-time walker. Semi-retired cannibal.</p><p>Who was supposed to be in bed.</p><p>Eddie scowled at him.</p><p>“Uh, hey,” Richie said. “How’s it going, Eddie Spaghetti?” He tried to sound blase, but there was something off about him.</p><p>“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Eddie accused, trying not to sound <em>too </em>angry.</p><p>“Yeah. Sorry,” Richie shrunk back against the staircase.</p><p>“Morning, Richie,” Mike interrupted. They turned to see him standing in the doorway of the kitchen. He motioned with his head to the table. “D’you want some breakfast?”</p><p>Richie looked grateful for the out.</p><p>“Mikey, you always know what to say to a guy.” He navigated around Eddie, careful not to meet his eyes.</p><p>He sat down at the table with a wince. Eddie tried to subtly check the bandage on his thigh (thank God Richie agreed to borrow some of Eddie’s shorts) and was relieved to find it blood-free. He watched Richie’s face carefully as Mike set the mug of tea and a bowl of rice pudding down in front of him.</p><p>There was a moment where no one spoke; they were all thinking the same thing, so why say it out loud?</p><p>Except for Richie, apparently, who felt the need to say it out loud. “Baby’s first no-meat meal,” he said, spreading his lips in a toothy grin. “Someone get the camera.”</p><p>Mike snorted, taking a seat. Eddie copied him, then picked up on their interrupted conversation.</p><p>They talked for a few minutes about fixing the window. Richie chimed in every so often, but was mostly content to sit there and slowly pick his way through the rice.</p><p>Finally, Eddie reached the conclusion that neither of them had any idea what to do, and should just wait for Ben to get back. He was good at house... stuff.</p><p>Mike agreed, then chugged the rest of his tea.</p><p>“So, Richie,” he started. Richie looked up at him. “Why were you trying to sneak out?”</p><p>Eddie almost choked.</p><p>Richie seemed to realize how rare it was for Mike to put his foot down. He gulped. “Just trying to do you guys a favor,” he said, trying to play it off as a joke. “Holidays are coming up, right?”—the holidays were not coming up; it was barely fall—”and I don’t have any pocket money, so I figure, hey, maybe instead of a scratch ticket or a dirty magazine you boys might like to not be sleeping next to a ticking time bomb.”</p><p>Eddie pursed his lips.</p><p>“So you think you’re gonna hurt us,” Mike said, leaning closer. “Is that it?”</p><p>Richie crossed his arms defensively. His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Look, it was nice of you to let me stay for a few nights while my leg healed, but. I–” he cut himself off, cleared his throat, then continued, “I ripped a guy’s neck out with my bare teeth barely a week ago. Remember that? Because I sure do.” He laughed humorlessly, running a hand through his messy hair. His speech crescendoed until it became almost manic. “I really wasn’t anticipating any pushback on this one, amigos! The rest of your little family are gonna be back any day now, and I doubt they’re gonna be happy to find Norman fucking Bates crashing in Marion’s bedroom.”</p><p>“<em>Marion—</em>you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Eddie muttered under his breath.</p><p>Mike’s jaw set. He opened his mouth to reply, but Eddie cut him off.</p><p>“Richie, get up.”</p><p>Richie shrunk back from the hand Eddie offered him. He looked between Mike and Eddie, then reached out slowly and let himself be pulled to a stand.</p><p>Eddie slung Richie’s arm around his shoulder, then put his arm around his waist. “C’mon,” he said, tugging Richie forwards and back towards the stairs. “And try not to put too much pressure on your leg.”</p><p>Richie obeyed reluctantly. “What are we doing here, pal?” he asked.</p><p>Eddie didn’t answer, focused on getting a hobbling Richie up the stairs. Mike followed them a couple paces back, ready to step in if Richie fell.</p><p>“I’m serious, Eds. Let me go,” Richie insisted once they reached the top of the stairs, struggling.</p><p>“No,” Eddie snapped.</p><p>He pulled a begrudging Richie down the hallway. By the time they reached the door, they were panting in exhaustion and Eddie’s ribs were loudly complaining.</p><p>“Mike?” Eddie asked. “Could you get the door?”</p><p>Mike reached around them and twisted the knob. The door swung open, slowly revealing the room inside.</p><p>After all the effort Mike and Eddie had gone to yesterday, it was spotless; no more cobwebs or piles of useless junk, just clean floorboards, zig-zag patterned blinds, a double bed, and a wardrobe.</p><p>Eddie let Richie drop onto the mattress, then stepped back. He put his hands on his knees and panted while Richie settled on the sheets, looking around the room with a curious expression.</p><p>“What…?”</p><p>“This room is yours, Richie,” Mike answered. “Eddie and I cleaned it out for you yesterday. And look,” he closed the door, then pushed a button on the underside of the knob. Something went <em>click. </em>“It locks, see? So Norman Bates doesn’t need to worry about the rest of the damn motel if he doesn’t want to.”</p><p>Richie stared at him. Tears welled in his eyes, but didn’t fall.</p><p>“Shit,” he laughed, disbelieving. “Really?”</p><p>“Yes,” Eddie answered, breathing finally under control. He wiped some sweat off his brow, then continued, “And you don’t get a prize for grievous bodily harm. We’ve all done shit we’re not proud of.”</p><p>Richie didn’t seem comforted by that at all. “Eddie, I’m—that’s different, okay? What if I can’t control myself and I hurt somebody else?”</p><p>Mike shook his head. “You won’t. We trust you, Richie.”</p><p>This time, Richie did start to cry.</p><p>Eddie moved towards him, hands outstretched, but Richie backed away from him. The movement jostled his leg, and Richie hissed. A stain of blood appeared on the white of his bandage.</p><p>“Fuck,” Eddie swore, dropping to his knees. He grabbed Richie’s leg in a vice-like grip, steadying him. “Stop squirming, you idiot.”</p><p>Mike sighed. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”</p><p>Richie wiped at his eyes in a borderline frantic motion. “It’s fine, Eds. Can you just go?”</p><p>“What, like I’ve never seen you cry before?” Eddie scoffed, thinking back to the mess Richie had been the first day after he’d killed Bowers.</p><p>“I’d just been <em>stabbed,</em>” Richie argued, still sniffling.</p><p>“You were more than stabbed, Richie,” Eddie said gently.</p><p>Richie sagged, the fight leaving him.</p><p>Mike knocked on the door. He didn’t say anything; he just pressed Eddie’s first aid kit into his hands, then set a bowl of warm water on the ground.</p><p>He hesitated for a moment, then wrapped his arms around Richie in a crushing hug.</p><p>Richie didn’t react until Mike was gone again.</p><p>“He hugged me,” he said, disbelief in his voice.</p><p>“Did he?” Eddie humored him, busy unwinding the bandage from Richie’s leg. He had Richie’s bare foot propped up on his knee, so the angle wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. Richie didn’t even seem to notice the intimacy of it all; a stroke of luck, Eddie figured.</p><p>“He’s a great hugger,” Richie answered. He grabbed a tissue that Eddie had placed on the bed next to him and dabbed at his face theatrically. “Like being hugged by a really strong grandma.”</p><p>Eddie shook his head fondly while he cleaned up the blood. “You’ve definitely popped a stitch,” he muttered, watching as more blood seeped from the now-clean wound. “Shit, hold on.”</p><p>Eddie grabbed a clean cloth, dabbed some alcohol on it, said, “Sorry, Rich. This is gonna hurt,” then pressed the cloth to the wound. He sat up on his knees, making sure to put as much pressure on the wound as he could.</p><p>Richie threw his head back and hissed out a curse. He grabbed Eddie’s shoulder on instinct, nails digging into his skin.</p><p>“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Eddie winced. “I’ve got to do this for a few minutes until a blood clot forms. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>Richie clenched his jaw. The grip on Eddie’s shoulder became less bruising, and he slowly started to relax. “It’s okay,” he said.</p><p>There was a moment of silence. Eddie looked up at him from under his eyelashes, and Richie quickly looked away.</p><p>He cleared his throat. “So we’re stuck here for a little bit, huh?”</p><p>“Just a few more minutes.”</p><p>“That’s what your mama said when I–”</p><p>“Jesus. I could just let you bleed out, you know.”</p><p>“But you wouldn’t,” teased Richie. Then his smile turned serious. “You wouldn’t?”</p><p>Eddie frowned. “‘Course not,” he said.</p><p>Richie nodded. He leaned forwards, and Eddie got a whiff of his own favorite soap on Richie’s skin. “Hey, uh…”</p><p>Eddie waited for him to finish with uncharacteristic patience.</p><p>“You woke me up, Eddie. You know that, right?”</p><p>“What…” Eddie shifted, uncomfortable. “What does that mean?”</p><p>Richie shook his head, starting to retreat. “Nevermind.”</p><p>“No, I don’t think so. Tell me what you meant.” Eddie’s arms were starting to ache, but he didn’t stop pressing down.</p><p>“Well, once upon a time there was a handsome prince with a <em>huge </em>dick who was cursed to sleep forever,” Richie said, slipping into one of his voices. “Until one day, another handsome prince—unconfirmed dick size—arrived. And he was so ill-tempered that it broke the curse and they rode off together into the sunset. Happily fucking ever after.”</p><p>“So which one were you supposed to be?” Eddie quipped.</p><p>Richie sighed. “You have no appreciation for the comedic arts, Edwardo.”</p><p>“Really? You wanna insult the guy putting pressure on your damn stab wound?”</p><p>“Only if he’s being obtuse, fartface,” Richie shot back.</p><p>“Who’s obtuse? Richie, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”</p><p>Richie narrowed his eyes. “Oh, you don’t?”</p><p>“No!” Eddie shouted, voice rising in pitch.</p><p>“Well, maybe I feel guilty that I owe you so damn much, and the second you asked me to help you I couldn’t do <em>shit; </em>I went and got myself stabbed and now you have to take care of me like I’m a helpless baby deer!” Richie snapped.</p><p>“Well, that’s stupid!” Eddie snapped back. Then he sagged, careful not to jostle Richie’s wound as the fight left him. He wanted to say, <em>If you were a baby deer I would have let you die already, asshole, </em>but. That felt a bit insensitive, even to him.</p><p>Richie sniffed and stared resolutely out the window.</p><p>“Look, you don’t owe me anything–” Eddie started.</p><p>“I will if you get—<em>it </em>from me. If you’re infected because I couldn’t stop Bowers from whaling on me in time,” Richie interrupted, voice low. “I know you, Eddie. I know that’s what you’re afraid of. And yet here you are!” He gestured to Eddie’s hands over his thigh. “Poking at the damn petri dish.”</p><p>Eddie’s heart tried to pack up and leave him, but it got stuck in his throat on the way out.</p><p>He eased off Richie’s wound, pulling back the cloth to examine it. After a few seconds without any blood seeping out, he let out a breath of relief. He wrapped it back up in a fresh bandage with quick, precise motions.</p><p>Then he did something stupid and reckless: he crawled into Richie Tozier’s lap. He was careful, at least, to not put any pressure on Richie’s wound, but not so careful that he wasn’t <em>in Richie’s damn lap.</em></p><p>“Hey. Look at me,” he pleaded. Richie obeyed. His eyes were wide, pupil’s blown. He looked like he was barely breathing.</p><p>Eddie steadied himself with a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “You’re not contagious. You can’t get me sick, okay?” Richie just stared at him.</p><p>Eddie wasn’t deterred. “Do you see that scar?” He held his thumb up in front of Richie’s face. Richie went cross eyed to look at it.</p><p>“I cut myself on a crossbow bolt before I found you in the backyard. I had an open wound the entire time I was patching you up, Rich. By the time I noticed, I’d already got your blood mixed up with mine. But I knew I’d probably be fine, because–”</p><p>“–I bit Henry Bowers,” Richie realized, mouth agape. “He didn’t turn. Shit, I didn’t even think… So, what does that make me?”</p><p>Eddie smiled at him gently. “I don’t know. I’m sorry; I wish I did. But I don’t think you’re infected anymore.” He let Richie sit with that thought before he added, “So, you see? You can’t scare me now. Gonna have to try harder.”</p><p>Richie pulled his features into a ridiculous expression. “How's this?” he asked.</p><p>Eddie laughed. He stood up from Richie’s lap, and Richie pouted at him.</p><p>“I’ll give you some time to workshop it,” Eddie teased.</p><p>“Thank you,” said Richie.</p><p>Eddie could tell he was being thanked for a lot of things.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“They’re back!” Mike shouted, joyous and far too awake for the time of morning.</p><p>Eddie groaned and buried his face into his pillow.</p><p>Then he processed what Mike said and sat bolt upright.</p><p>“They’re back?” he called, scrambling to shove a sweater over his head and some socks on his cold feet.</p><p>Mike didn’t answer, but Eddie didn’t care. He raced down the stairs two at a time (and, God, it was nice to be able to run again—his ribs still gave him trouble here and there, but nothing he couldn’t handle). He burst out onto the front porch to find a sight for sore, tired eyes.</p><p>Bill was riding in on a bicycle—rusty metal, squeaky brakes, and a sturdy frame—but he swung himself off it the second he reached Mike. They threw their arms around each other, and Bill started laughing. “I found us a bike!” he said. “It–”</p><p>The rest of his words were swallowed by Mike’s mouth.</p><p>Beverly started cheering and hollering, and Ben wasn’t far behind, though his cheers were less sarcastic. They both looked exhausted, heavy bags under their eyes and on their backs. Stan looked the same, bringing up the rear with an entire wheelbarrow full of dry pantry staples.</p><p>“And just where have you all been?” Eddie called, eyebrows raised sternly. He started walking up the path to meet them, arms crossed. “What kinda time do you call this?”</p><p>Stan set the wheelbarrow down with a <em>thunk, </em>grinning up at him from ear to ear. “We hit the motherlode, Eddie,” he answered. “That Walmart we found Richie in? It was stocked to the nines. We lured the walkers out with food and they didn’t bother us at all, it was incredible!”</p><p>Eddie frowned. “That sounds stupidly dangerous.”</p><p>Stan’s smile started to wilt, then Eddie’s poker face broke and he started laughing. “God, I missed you guys so much,” Eddie said, throwing his arms around Stan.</p><p>Stan staggered back, wrapping his arms around Eddie’s waist to catch him. “I missed you too, Eddie,” he allowed.</p><p>Another set of arms wrapped around the both of them. “Were you bored shitless without us?” Beverly asked, squeezing.</p><p>Eddie didn’t answer; he just wanted to bask in the warm comfort of his friends for a minute more.</p><p>Eventually the hug broke apart, and Stan, Bev and Eddie turned to see Mike trying to ride the bicycle with Bill holding the handlebars like a dad at a park with his kid. “You’re doing it!” Bill encouraged. Mike started to wobble severely.</p><p>“Careful!” Ben called, wincing.</p><p>The bike toppled, sending Bill and Mike to the ground.</p><p>“C’mon, let’s get everything packed away,” Stan said. “Eddie, you might want to get some bandaids ready for Evil Knievel over there.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The rest of the day passed like this: bandaid for Mike’s skinned knee; Ben, Bill and Eddie packing away all the food while Beverly and Stan unpacked everything else; presents were announced—a new throwing knife for Eddie, a beat-up science fiction paperback for Mike, and a book of knock-knock jokes for Richie—</p><p>“Like you need to give him more material,” Eddie joked, then added, “besides, he’s funnier than this shit. Knock knock–” he started, lifting the book to read one aloud while Stan rolled his eyes and tried to grab it off him.</p><p>“Who’s there?” came Richie’s voice from the stairs. Everyone turned at once to see him standing there, hanging over the bannister with a grin on his face.</p><p>His smile shrunk at the ensuing silence. Eddie looked around at his friend’s stunned expressions. He winced.</p><p>“Sorry, might have forgot to mention…” Eddie said, stepping between Richie and the others. “Richie’s house trained now,” he announced, and no one except Richie laughed.</p><p>“What?” Bev asked, excitement coloring her voice. “He–”</p><p>“He’s in the h-h-house?” Bill stuttered.</p><p>“<em>House trained?” </em>Stan echoed.</p><p>“Hi, Richie!” said Ben, waving to him.</p><p>“Alright, everyone. One at a time,” Mike said, moving to stand beside Eddie. “We gave him the spare room at the end of the hall. We can sit down and talk about it; you probably have questions.”</p><p>“Hi, Ben,” Richie croaked.</p><p>“C’mon, you too,” Mike motioned for Richie to join them.</p><p>Eddie met him at the bottom of the stairs and offered his hand for Richie to lean on. Richie wrapped an arm around his shoulder instead, and Eddie led him to the table. He sat between Bill and Eddie and stared at his hands.</p><p>“What happened?” Bill asked, straight to business.</p><p>“Richie, are you okay?” asked Ben.</p><p>Richie looked up at him, grateful. “Peachy keen, hotstuff,” he grinned.</p><p>Ben raised his eyebrows to his hairline.</p><p>Eddie passed Richie the book of jokes so he had something to do with his hands. Richie started thumbing through it absently.</p><p>“It was Bowers. He came for us, like you said,” Mike finally answered. He leaned forwards, elbows resting on the table. He looked around at everyone one at a time, meeting their eyes. “They set a horde of walkers loose on the front gates as a distraction. Henry and Belch tried to sneak through the back; probably to lock us out of our own house while we were eaten alive.” He motioned to the broken window that was barely visible across the den. “Richie went to stop them and got a knife in his thigh for his troubles.”</p><p>“Fuck,” Bev hissed, sitting back.</p><p>“So, what about Bowers? His goons? Are they still out there–” Stan asked, shifting anxiously.</p><p>“They’re dead,” Richie interrupted. “Hey, this one’s pretty good. Knock knock.”</p><p>No one said ‘<em>who’s there’</em>.</p><p>“D-dead?” Bill ran a hand down his face. “I don’t know if that’s good news or bad.”</p><p>“Are you serious, Bill?” Eddie scoffed. “Of course it’s good news. They were trying to kill us over a resource we were ready to share with them. Richie did what he had to do. It was self defence.”</p><p>A beat of silence.</p><p>“So, the zombie eats some kids and now we get to sleep down the hallway from him,” muttered Stan darkly.</p><p>“Watch it, Uris,” Mike warned.</p><p>Stan pushed away from the table. “No, I don’t think I will. It’s one thing to have him locked outside for our protection, and another to let him in like he’s one of us. Eddie, back me up here,” he pleaded. His skin was flushed, breaths panicked.</p><p>“Stan…”</p><p>Stan stared at him, betrayed. “Back me up!”</p><p>“I’m not gonna back you up, Stan. He’s not... one of them anymore, okay? He’s just like us.”</p><p>“I can’t believe this,” Stan huffed. “You were the most against him from the start. You couldn’t stop begging us to just kill him. And now you’re, what? His boyfriend?”</p><p>“Uris!” Mike snapped, slamming his hand down on the table. “You can take that shit outside.”</p><p>Stan froze, anger withering away.</p><p>Eddie shrunk back from him, cheeks burning and vision swimming. Richie was silent and utterly still by his side.</p><p>“Sorry–” Stan stuttered, backing away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”</p><p>“Outside, Stan,” said Bill, standing. He marched towards the front door, and Stan followed, head bowed.</p><p>In the wake of that explosion, no one seemed to know what to say.</p><p>“Hey, Richie,” Bev said after a long stretch of silence. Her tone was gentle; friendly. Richie looked up at her blankly. “D’you want some help decorating your room?”</p><p>She stood without waiting for a response. He copied her, rounding the table with shaky hops to avoid putting pressure on his wound. As he approached, Beverly met Eddie’s eyes.</p><p>There was a question in hers, and Eddie answered it with a nod.</p><p>When Richie reached her side, Bev offered him her hand and a smile.</p><p>He accepted both, and she supported him up the stairs with a patience that Eddie had rarely witnessed from her.</p><p>“I’ve got so many cool fabrics that I could use for curtains, or sheets, or whatever you want. And I can make you some little friends out of wool or metal or wood...” she said, words trailing off as they ascended out of Eddie’s earshot.</p><p>Ben, Eddie and Mike were left at the table.</p><p>“So…” Ben said, “Anything else exciting that we missed?”</p><p>“Richie recited Indiana Jones. The whole movie,” Eddie answered morosely. He crossed his arms on the table and let his head fall into the pillow of muscle. His next words were muffled. “It was amazing.”</p><p>Ben patted his hair comfortingly.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Stan came to find Eddie a few hours later. Everyone else was setting up a bonfire in the backyard—well, everyone except Richie, who was sitting on a log and barking ridiculous orders like <em>trim the main sails, Ben! </em>And <em>Mike! You call that a log? Get a fatter one; one with more juice on it.</em></p><p>Eddie was watching from the porch, flipping his new knife. It always took a while to get used to the balance of a knife; the way it fit in your hand. Eddie hoped that this was the last new knife he’d need. Then again, he hoped that every time.</p><p>“Hey,” Stan said. He sidled up beside Eddie and put his elbows on the railing.</p><p>“Hey,” Eddie said, looking at him from the corner of his eyes.</p><p>“He’s…” Stan trailed off, head tilted to the side as he stared at Richie. “Kind of annoying.”</p><p>Eddie nodded. “Is that all?” he asked. He sounded snippy, even to his own ears.</p><p>“No, I just mean–” Stan huffed, then started again. “He’s got a personality. We knew that before I left, but. He's really changed. You probably didnt notice because you were here the whole time, but he's completley different than when we found him. He’s loud and funny and sort of an asshole; walkers aren’t any of those things. So, I’m sorry. For not listening to you earlier. I was caught off guard and I said some really rude things that I didn’t mean. Bill chewed me out for it plenty, but you can too, if you want.”</p><p>Eddie sniffed. “No, that’s okay,” he decided. “You didn’t say anything worse than I have.”</p><p>Stan didn’t seem happy with that. “Hey, Eddie. Look. You’re my best friend, okay? And I love you.”</p><p>Eddie looked at him, startled.</p><p>“So maybe I haven’t said that before!” Stan defended, raising his arms in surrender. “But it’s true. And for a while there, you and I got on great being The Paranoid Ones together. But friendship is about letting people grow and learn new things about... about themselves and the world.” Stan started to smile, and Eddie couldn’t help but smile with him. “You’re my family. All of you are. And if you’re telling me that Richie is, too, then. I believe you, and I’m with you. It’s not like I don’t like the guy,” he added with a laugh. “I found him that book of jokes—though he’s apparently ‘too funny’ for it, so what would I know.”</p><p>Eddie’s heart fluttered at the sound of Stan's laugh, unburdened. “Just wait til you see how good he is at the Rubik’s cube,” Eddie said. “He’ll do the mashed potatoes all over your sorry ass.”</p><p>“Oh, I don’t think so,” Stan said. “You’re messing with me.”</p><p>Eddie shrugged and skipped down the stairs to join the others at the now-lit bonfire.</p><p>“You’re messing with me, right?” Stan called after him.</p><p>Eddie laughed.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>It had been a while since they’d had a good bonfire. Mike and Bill made some skewers of meat and vegetables for everybody, and Bev passed around some wine that she’d managed to find on the supply run. Stan sat next to Richie, and they talked for a while. It seemed awkward at first, then Bev said something that made them both laugh, and the tension broke.</p><p>After a few hours, Eddie found himself staring into the coals as the voices of his friends floated through his ears. He looked up and caught Richie’s eyes from across the fire.</p><p>“Eddie!” Richie called to him, grinning toothily—a surprisingly friendly expression, Eddie thought, given that they hadn’t talked since Stan’s outburst in the kitchen. “Eddie Spaghetti! Edvardo Spagardo! Edw–”</p><p>“What?” Eddie laughed, dizzy.</p><p>Richie pointed over his shoulder at the wheelbarrow. It was empty now; nothing but a lining of grass at the bottom to cushion the jars that Stan had brought home in it.</p><p>“Put me in the wheelbarrow!” Richie answered. “I want to go for a joyride.”</p><p>Eddie pushed himself to his feet and dusted his hands off on his pants. “You’re insane,” he accused, circling round the fire to get to his side. “I’m not taking you for a joyride in a wheelbarrow. You have a puncture wound.”</p><p>“Okay,” Richie agreed. “How about a stroll about the ton?”</p><p>“I have no idea what you’re even talking about,” said Eddie, but he fetched the wheelbarrow anyway. Ben helped him pick Richie up and lay him down in it without feeling the need to ask any questions.</p><p>“This is why you’re my favorite, Benjamin.”</p><p>“Thanks, Richie,” Ben answered, laughing. “But I don’t think that’s true.”</p><p>Richie gasped and Eddie started rolling him away from the fire.</p><p>“Are you accusing me of lying?” Richie called, twisting around in the wheelbarrow. “Real original, Ben. The disabled kid is making things up! I can’t believe I trusted you.”</p><p>“Dude, you’re not disabled,” Stan called. “You’re just a putz in a wheelbarrow.”</p><p>Richie started laughing uproariously. Eddie shot Stan a glance and found him laughing at Richie’s antics like they were old friends.</p><p>“Now what?” Eddie asked, wiggling the wheelbarrow to get Richie’s attention. “A lap of the house? C’mon, this was your stupid idea.”</p><p>Richie relaxed back into the metal. He slumped down to look up at the stars, his uninjured leg dangling off one edge and kicking at the tall grass. “Take me wherever you want, Eds,” he answered, surprisingly placid. “Life’s about the journey sometimes.”</p><p>“Did Bev try and make you read a self-help book?” Eddie asked, steering the wheelbarrow around some rocks.</p><p>“What? I can’t be philosophical?” Richie asked. “Geez, does this thing go any faster? You drive like a grandpa.”</p><p>“I drive like someone who doesn’t want to contribute to traffic collision statistics,” Eddie shot back.</p><p>“Collide your feet to the ground. C’mon!” Richie goaded. He leant his head backwards to blink upside down at Eddie and pout.</p><p>“No,” Eddie said.</p><p>Richie slumped back, opening his mouth to reply. Eddie took off running before he could. He sprinted through the field, racing away from the bonfire. The ground out here was soft, but Richie was still thrown around in the wheelbarrow like a kid playing bumper cars. He was laughing and cheering the entire damn time.</p><p>Eddie slowed to a halt at the treeline, finally letting the wheelbarrow sit back on its legs. Richie’s head was staring right up at him. He grinned.</p><p>Eddie wiped some sweat off his brow, still panting. “How’s that for a grandpa?” he asked. “Dick.”</p><p>“That was fucking incredible, Eds. A real non-stop thrill ride. You gotta try it sometime,” Richie sighed.</p><p>Eddie rolled his eyes. “Sure, maybe.”</p><p>He walked around to stand beside Richie’s legs. The bandage seemed clean, but Eddie brushed his thumb across it just in case there was something he wasn’t seeing—this far away from the bonfire, the only light was from the stars above and the half-full moon.</p><p>“You feelin’ me up, Kaspbrak?” Richie asked. It had the structure of a joke, but Richie sounded a little too breathless to pull it off.</p><p>Eddie ripped his hand back. He didn’t say anything.</p><p>Richie sighed and pushed himself upright. “Sorry. Look, about what Stan said earlier–” Eddie moved to speak, but Richie held a hand up to him. “Just listen for a second, okay? He apologised to me already, but I told him he didn’t need to. It takes more than a few death threats to hurt my feelings.”</p><p>Eddie didn’t think that was true at all. “Richie, I don't care if you don’t think I owe you an apology. You’re gonna get one anyway,” he said. He started counting things off on his fingers: “I thought you were going to eat us all in our sleep on night one. I was wrong. I thought you didn’t understand a word we were saying. I was wrong. I thought walkers couldn’t ever get better, just worse. I was wrong. I thought you wouldn’t remember your own name. I was wrong. I thought you’d never be able to spend time with animals or people without eventually trying to eat them. I was wrong. I thought; there’s no way we’re letting him inside. I thought; there’s no way I’m ever going to want him to touch me. I thought; there’s no way I—I’m running out of fingers here, pal,” Eddie squeaked, manic.</p><p>Richie was quiet for a moment. Eddie wished he could see his face, but it was cast in darkness. “That was one hell of an apology,” he said, sounding stunned.</p><p>Eddie kept his lips shut. His heart was beating out of his chest, urging him to run. Just make a break for it. Start again somewhere new. You’ve blown it.</p><p>But Eddie stayed firm. What was that that Richie had said to him? <em>You’re the bravest guy I know</em>. He wanted so badly for that to be true.</p><p>“Richie–” he started, then paused. Twenty different ways to say it rushed through his head, and none of them seemed right. “Do you ever think about...You and me?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Richie breathed. “All the time.”</p><p>“What do you think about?”</p><p>Richie made a choked noise. “I don’t wanna tell you that, Eds.”</p><p><em>There’s still time to run, </em>his feet reminded him.</p><p>“Okay. How ‘bout I show you what I think about, then.” He gulped, then offered Richie his hand.</p><p>Richie took it slowly, like it was going to blow up in his face. His palm was warm and slightly sweaty. Eddie held him tight, tugging him until he was standing.</p><p>They were stood so close together that Eddie could feel it when Richie shivered at a gust of wind. He still couldn’t see his face, but his glasses reflected the moonlight prettily. And besides; Eddie knew what he looked like. He put his hand on Richie’s chest just because he could. He could feel the bumps of Richie’s scar through the fabric of his shirt, and took a second to trace the path of the <em>‘a’ </em>with his thumb. Richie went utterly still.</p><p>“I’m going to kiss you now,” Eddie said, “and you can tell me to stop if you want to, but you’ve gotta promise not to joke about this or I’ll kick your ass.”</p><p>Sharp intake of breath, then Richie nodding.</p><p>Eddie brought his free hand up to his cheek, just so he could have some idea of where his mouth was. He already knew he’d be bad at this; he didn’t want to add ‘kisses nose instead of lips’ to the list of reasons why.</p><p>Richie’s cheek was unmoving beneath Eddie’s hand. He was holding his breath.</p><p>“Dude, breathe. You’re gonna pass out,” Eddie reminded him.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Then he kissed him.</p><p>Richie was so stiff for the first few seconds that Eddie felt like making a run for it after all, but then he let out the breath he’d been holding—<em>told you—</em>and started kissing back. Richie kissed him like his life depending on it; like Eddie was going to tell him to stop any second now, so he had to make them all count.</p><p>But Eddie didn’t tell him to stop. Eddie just tangled his hand in Richie’s hair, utterly swept away by how fucking <em>nice </em>this was. Why had he been so afraid of this? There was no way that this—them, together—could be bad, or wrong, or sick.</p><p>They were both fucked up, and they both had blood on their hands, but this—this was the best thing they’d ever done, Eddie thought, and this made him forget about the rest. This; holding each other close as they stood at the threshold of trees and fields, the sounds of their friends laughing and a bonfire crackling in the distance as they kissed and kissed. Of course this was good.</p><p>When Eddie pulled back to breathe, Richie didn’t let him go far. He nuzzled against Eddie’s cheek, then snorted softly under his breath.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Richie answered in a terrible Italian accent. “Thata wazza spicey meatball!”</p><p>“Richie I swear to God what <em>did I say about—</em>you couldn’t even make it one damn minute?<em>”</em></p><p>Richie started shaking with laughter as Eddie ranted at him. He sounded so young and so insanely happy that Eddie couldn’t help but join in.</p><p>“I’m sorry, I know—” Richie got out in between laughs. “Can we do it again? I won’t say anything stupid this time. I promise.”</p><p>“I don’t believe you,” Eddie answered. He stood on his tiptoes so Richie didn’t have to bend down this time. “But okay.”</p><p>When they rejoined the others at the fire—Richie in the wheelbarrow, hands behind his head and a shit-eating grin on his face; Eddie, complaining about how heavy Richie was but unable to stop smiling himself—the others made it three minutes before digging into them.</p><p>“Did you have fun on your walk?” Bev asked, waggling her eyebrows.</p><p>“I’m thinking... Spring wedding,” Ben said to Stan.</p><p>“Honeymoon in Southern France,” answered Stan, playing along.</p><p>Eddie groaned. “You guys are the worst!”</p><p>“Yeah,” Richie looped his arm around Eddie’s shoulder, an expression of outrage on his face. “Southern France? We’re men of taste, thank you very much! We’re going to Florida.”</p><p>Eddie hid his face in his hands.</p><p>Mike chuckled from Eddie’s side. Eddie pinned him with a glare. “How’d you get out of this?” he accused.</p><p>Mike shrugged, offering him the rest of his wine. “Me and Bill don’t sneak off to make out in the woods,” he answered, a note of teasing in his voice.</p><p>Eddie snatched the cup from his hand and chugged it.</p><p>“Hey,” Mike said, “I’m really happy for you.”</p><p>“Are you?” Eddie asked.</p><p>Mike smiled. “Yes, Eddie. Of course.”</p><p>“I am, too,” offered Bill from across the fire.</p><p>“And me,” said Bev.</p><p>Ben nodded.</p><p>Richie pointed at Stan. “Last to say it, Stanley.” He turned to Eddie and added, “that’s the face of a man who’s not happy for us,” in a hushed whisper.</p><p>“Heard that,” said Stan.</p><p>He looked at the two of them; Eddie could only imagine what he was seeing. Richie’s arm around Eddie’s shoulder, Eddie’s knee pressed to Richie’s, and the glow of happiness in their eyes? Or–</p><p>“I’m happy for you, too,” Stan decided. “And I really mean that.”</p><p>–maybe just his friends.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>Epilogue</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Stanley Uris was sitting on the roof of Safehouse, Maine, staring at a pair of Mississippi kites through his binoculars. They were chasing each other through the sky, unbothered by the chill fall breeze.</p><p>He heard a noise from down below. He let his binoculars fall to his chest while he peered over the edge of the roof.</p><p>He saw Ben and Richie tinkering with their latest project: a broken generator they’d salvaged from what was left of Bower’s camp in the nearby town. They were hooking it up to the wind turbine today to start charging it with the excess energy the turbine generated—Stan knew because they wouldn’t stop going on and on about it over breakfast that morning.</p><p>Stan watched as Bertha appeared from around the side of the house. She was making a break for Richie at lightning speed. She crashed into his legs before he had time to react, which sent him stumbling forwards. His arms pinwheeled comically as he tried to stay standing.</p><p>A train of baby ducks waddled after Bertha, somehow also at lightning speed. The little yellow balls of fluff caught up with her and crowded around Richie’s feet, nibbling at his shoelaces.</p><p>Ben started laughing.</p><p><em>That’s what you get for adopting six random ducklings you found lost in the woods, </em>Stan thought—though he loved them so much that he would’ve done the exact same.</p><p>Richie flipped Ben off for laughing then escorted his adoring feathered fans over to the barn.</p><p>“See any good birds yet?”</p><p>Stan smiled and turned to see Beverly poking her head out of the attic window.</p><p>“A couple great tits, actually,” he answered, patting the tile next to him.</p><p>She laughed and crawled over to his side. She was wearing a lumpy scarf with a garish color scheme that Stan unfortunately recognised from his failed knitting attempt.</p><p>“God,” he shivered. “That thing looks worse than I remember.”</p><p>She pouted. “Shut up. I think it’s adorable.”</p><p>Stan shook his head. “No accounting for taste, is there, Miss Marsh?”</p><p>“Guess not.” Bev sighed in faux-disappointment.</p><p>Stan offered her his binoculars. “Look north-west.”</p><p>She obeyed, scanning the treeline intently. She adjusted the focus, then gasped. “Woah...is that–”</p><p>“Smoke? Yeah. I noticed it this morning. Just looks like a small campfire.”</p><p>“It’s been ages since we’ve had a group of survivors travel through here,” she said, lowering the binoculars. “Do you think they’ll come our way?”</p><p>Stan shrugged. “If they do, I hope they’re friendly. Maybe even friendly enough for us to give them that,” he pointed down at the new generator.</p><p>“Wouldn’t that be nice, huh?” Bev smiled sadly. “Meet other humans who aren’t psychopaths.”</p><p>“Well, if they are, we could just sic Richie on them.”</p><p>Bev snorted. “At this point, Eddie’s more likely to take them down. He might be little but he’s got something to lose now and he always aims for the kneecaps,” she joked. Then, she reached over and started pinching at Stan’s knees. He laughed as he batted her hands away. “Oh, speak of the rabid angel,” she said, nodding downwards.</p><p>Stan saw Eddie emerging from the woods with a bundle of firewood and kindling sticks over his shoulder. Mike was by his side with a bundle of his own and a smile on his face.</p><p>“What do you think he’s grinning about?” Bev asked.</p><p>“The fact that it’s Rosh Hashanah and we get to eat honey-apples for dinner,” guessed Stan.</p><p>Bev nodded sagely.</p><p>Stan watched Eddie drop off the firewood and make a beeline for the barn. He found Richie out the front lying on the grass while the ducklings pecked grains off his shirt and Bertha licked his hair.</p><p>Eddie put his hands on his hips sternly, and Stan laughed.</p><p>“<em>Richard, I’m so disappointed to find you like this</em>,” Bev narrated, leaning her head on Stan’s shoulder.</p><p>“<em>It’s unsanitary to let a goat lick your hair,” </em>continued Stan. “<em>You’ll get brain worms and die.”</em></p><p>Down below, Richie sat up and pulled Eddie down into a kiss.</p><p>On the roof, Beverly groaned and pretended to cover her eyes.</p><p>Stan laughed so hard he almost dropped his binoculars.</p><p>“C’mon.” Bev tried to drag him towards the window. “Bill’s going to make all the food wrong if you’re not there to supervise.”</p><p>Stan wiped his eyes and let her pull him into a stand then lead him back through the window.</p><p>He hesitated for a moment once he was through, hand still wrapped in Bev’s grasp. He looked back out the window to the north-west. The sun was beginning to set, casting the sky in a wash of pinks and yellows and reds, but he could still see that faint whisp of smoke rising up to meet the clouds.</p><p>Something welled within his chest, and that something was hope. This year was going to be better than the last, he thought. It was a feeling he hadn’t known for a very long time.</p><p>Then Bev tugged on his hand, and he turned away from the window. He answered the question in her eyes with a breathless smile.</p><p>They joined their family downstairs.</p><p>That night, they toasted to a happy new year.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading! There's a post over on my <a href="https://graceling-in-a-suit.tumblr.com/post/623671574507241472/up-against-your-will-by-witnesstomyownhistory">tumblr</a> that I would love it if you could give a reblog. And don't forget to send my <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CCpU2nNFUjP/?igshid=1dzc4occx44cu"> lovely artist</a> some love, too :*</p></blockquote></div></div>
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